The knowledge audit
What do you know for certain, what do you believe, what are you assuming, and what would you need to find out? Sort them before any method, so the method works on facts.
For Any kind of thing · After Donna Ogle’s KWL chart, 1986 · takes fifteen minutes
How to run it
- Write the thing in one line. Then what you know for certain about it, with how you know it beside each one: a source, a measurement, a person who would know.
- What you believe: things you would act on but couldn’t point to a source for. Write them plainly. This is the long list, and the uncomfortable one.
- What you are assuming: what would have to be true for the way you wrote line one to make sense. Ask what you would have to believe to phrase it that way.
- Go down the beliefs and assumptions and ask of each: if this were wrong, would the answer change? Mark the ones where it would. Most won’t.
- For each marked one, write who could confirm it or what you would look at. Not "more research": a name, a document, a number.
- Check the two or three that matter before you pick a method. Then run the method with the facts and the guesses already separated, and watch for any step that rests on a belief.
Where it falls down. Writing beliefs in the facts box because they feel like facts. The test is the source column: if there is nothing to put there, it is a belief.
With a pen
What I know for certain
How I know itA source, a measurement, a person who would know
What I believeWould act on it, can’t source it. The long list
What I’m assumingWhat would have to be true for the top line to make sense
The two or three that would change the answer if wrongWho could confirm each, or what I’d look at. Check these first