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Short diagnostic hints for the two Practice on your own problems in this chapter. Attempt each problem before opening the hint. Complete answers appear in Appendix G of The Defensible Decision: Practice Workbook.
Problem 1 — the reconciliation gap
Restated: A Copilot-generated report cites a Q3 revenue number ($42.7M) that is close to but not exactly the number your finance partner uses ($42.9M). Which of the three failure modes is most likely firing? Name the sequence of checks you would run to isolate it, and the specific Add-to-page field-set inspection that would confirm.
Show a diagnostic hint
Diagnostic cue. Reconcile every headline measure to the BRD and source-of-truth query before trusting a polished report.
Complete answers appear in Appendix G of The Defensible Decision: Practice Workbook.
Problem 2 — the BRD-in-disguise Crystallize failure
Restated: A colleague reports that they have run three Refine cycles on a Copilot report and the executive still says «this is not what I wanted.» Name why this is a Crystallize failure disguised as a Refine failure, and the specific reset move.
Show a diagnostic hint
Diagnostic cue. If the prompt leaves a BRD field implicit, make it explicit in Crystallize before Copilot builds.
Complete answers appear in Appendix G of The Defensible Decision: Practice Workbook.
Related on this site
- Chapter 9 companion page — further reading, self-check quiz, and the reconciliation activity.
- Prompt library — the Crystallize prompt templates that make the reset move easier.
- All chapter companion pages.
- Feedback — share corrections and improvement opportunities across all chapters.
About the three-tier Practice format
Each chapter of the book closes with a three-tier Practice block adapted from Cole Nussbaumer Knaflic's course-adoption pattern in Storytelling with Data: Let's Practice!: Practice with us (one worked problem with full solution in the book), Practice on your own (open problems with complete answers in Appendix G of the Practice Workbook; this page offers short diagnostic hints), and Practice at work (an open-ended prompt to apply the chapter's move to a live artifact). This page hosts the middle tier.