Hermitian operators with exact zero modes subject to non-Hermitian perturbations are considered. Specific focus is on the distribution of the former zero eigenvalues of the Hermitian operators. The broadening of these zero modes is found to follow an elliptic Gaussian random matrix ensemble of fixed size, where the symmetry class of the perturbation determines the behavior of the modes. This distribution follows from a central limit theorem of matrices and is shown to be robust to deformations.