AI for CIOs
A citation is not proof: how do you check an AI answer?
SimplSolutions editorial team · Answer quality · 4 min read
Published
AI-assisted original editorial guidance. Calculations and scenarios are illustrative, not customer results.
Open the source and locate the claim
An assistant can cite a genuine document while making a statement the document does not support. It can also quote a passage accurately from a superseded guide. Begin with three separate checks: does the source support the claim, is this the current approved version, and does it apply to this employee and task? A working hyperlink passes none of those checks by itself.
Choose a short answer with consequential instructions. Split it into material claims rather than judging the paragraph as a whole. For a synthetic remote-access answer, those claims might include which guide applies, the permitted setup action and who handles exceptions. Ask the reviewer to identify the supporting passage for each.
Use a claim-support ledger
| Answer claim | Expected evidence | Review outcome |
|---|---|---|
| Managed-laptop procedure applies | Audience statement in current guide | Supported or wrong audience |
| Employee should follow approved setup steps | Relevant procedure passage | Supported or invented step |
| Service desk handles unresolved cases | Current escalation contact | Supported or stale contact |
Keep unsupported, contradicted and unresolved as separate outcomes. Unsupported means the evidence does not establish the statement. Contradicted means the source says something different. Unresolved means the reviewer cannot establish applicability or currency. That distinction helps the owner fix the right problem rather than rewriting every answer indiscriminately.
Illustrative editorial photograph, not a customer result.
Do not replace evidence with confidence
A percentage attached to an answer is useful only if the team understands how it was produced, validated and used. It does not substitute for inspecting the source. A highly fluent answer can still contain an unsupported instruction. An awkwardly worded answer can be factually correct. Evaluate presentation separately from factual support.
Ask the assistant the same question with a missing location or device type. If those details change the procedure, the system should clarify before selecting instructions. Then ask a question the sources do not answer. Appropriate abstention is part of useful quality, not a failure to maximize answer volume.
Evaluate retrieval and generation separately
Save the retrieved passages alongside the generated response in the permitted evaluation environment. If the right passage was never retrieved, investigate source ingestion, indexing, metadata and retrieval. If it was retrieved but the answer changes its meaning, investigate generation and validation. If it belongs to the wrong audience, investigate authorization and applicability.
This separation prevents a common waste of effort: repeatedly changing the model when the authoritative instruction is missing. It also prevents a retrieval improvement from being reported as a fully solved answer problem. Both stages need evidence on the actual task.
Keep reviewers out of an endless repair loop
Sample ordinary answers as well as known difficult cases. Record claim failures, source-version errors and review time. Group repeated failures by their cause. If ten answers have the same stale contact, correct the maintained source and verify propagation rather than editing ten drafts and leaving the underlying problem untouched.
Protect private evaluation records. Use references and synthetic cases where possible, and define access and retention for logs. A review process should not create a second uncontrolled copy of company information. Your owners decide what evidence can be retained and who may inspect it.
Put this to work this week
Choose three material answers, open their sources and mark every instruction supported, contradicted or unresolved. Record which passage supports each step. Ask a second reviewer to inspect one case without seeing the first verdict. Discuss disagreements with the procedure owner. Add the resolved case to your evaluation set, then review the stale-answer test so tomorrow's answer is checked against tomorrow's approved source.
Use the AI Knowledge Access Test Sheet to record expected evidence and review outcomes. OWASP's RAG security guidance covers source attribution and pipeline controls; a citation display alone does not implement them. Request an evidence-led demo with one approved procedure and a question it cannot answer. SimplSolutions should show both the supported answer and the honest escalation, not only the fluent success.
