Assumption And Evidence Audit

Assumption & Evidence Audit

Purpose

Tests assumptions and identifies evidence gaps before a recommendation is locked in.

Anchored in research

• 45ck — assumption-extractor / evidence-gap-review
• WEF Future of Jobs 2025 — analytical thinking #1

Method

1. Extract every load-bearing assumption from the analysis or recommendation — not just the numeric ones. An assumption is load-bearing if the conclusion would change had it gone the other way; test this by asking "what if this were false?" for each claim.
2. Trace each assumption to its source: a cited fact, a stakeholder-provided figure, an inference from other data, or an unstated guess. Anything without a traceable source gets flagged [assumption — verify], regardless of how confident it sounds.
3. Grade the evidence behind each sourced assumption on strength, not just presence — a single anecdote, a small sample, an internal estimate, and a validated external benchmark are not the same tier of evidence, and the grade should say so explicitly.
4. Rank the assumption list by leverage (how much the conclusion depends on it) × evidence weakness — this is the analytical-thinking discipline the WEF's 2025 Future of Jobs report ranks as the top core skill: identifying which unverified claims actually matter, rather than treating every gap as equally important.
5. For each high-leverage, low-evidence assumption, specify exactly what evidence would resolve it and how hard it would be to obtain — not just that it's missing.
6. Produce a gap list ordered by priority, separate from the analysis itself, so a reviewer can see at a glance which unresolved assumptions should block sign-off versus which can proceed with the risk noted.

What this skill does NOT do

• Doesn't make the final decision for you — it produces a structured draft to support a human decision.
• Doesn't confirm figures, market data, or competitor data from memory — it uses the inputs you provide, or marks an assumption clearly ([assumption — verify]).
• Doesn't produce new evidence — it reveals what evidence is missing and what needs to be obtained.

Refinement notes

Areas to keep deepening with real practice:

• your own rules of thumb and heuristics for this technique
• concrete templates (into ../../references/)
• reference cases / your own examples
• what this skill deliberately does not do (guardrails, common mistakes) — add to the list above

This is an internal working note, not a claim about the skill's current usability. Track depth privately via the maturity field in skills_index.json (see ../../../meta/maturity_levels.md). Don't add new fields to the frontmatter — name and description are the only ones allowed (see ../../../meta/frontmatter_schema.md).

Continue from here

• Next in this pack: ../business-case-builder/SKILL.md — Builds a full business case: problem, solution, economics (ROI/NPV/IRR), risks, timeline, stakeholders, recommendation.
• A ready-made skill chain for this situation: see ../../../playbooks/
• This pack's shared guardrails: ../../CLAUDE.md

References

• ../../references/ — the pack's shared background material
• ../../CLAUDE.md — the pack's shared guardrails