Start with a concrete decision, collect traceable sources, and leave a receipt that someone else can review. This guide helps you complete an initial investigation in 10 minutes with AI support, without treating a model response as verified evidence.
When to use it and when not to
Use it to compare suppliers, understand a market, prepare a meeting, summarize public information, or identify questions for deeper research. Do not use it as a substitute for legal, medical, or financial advice, or to approve a high-risk decision without human review. Consider a business audit only when the work is recurring, used by a team, involves meaningful volume or spend, contains sensitive data, or creates a material bottleneck. Otherwise, reuse this resource or ask the general Quest assistant.
10-minute worksheet
Fill these fields before requesting an answer:
- Decision or question: ______________________________
- End user and deadline: ____________________________
- Geographic, time, and sector scope: _______________
- Success criteria: _________________________________
- Allowed or supplied sources: ______________________
- Excluded sources: _________________________________
- Impact if the conclusion is wrong: _________________
Source log:
| ID | Title or URL | Type | Publication date | Access date | What it supports | Status |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| S1 | supplied / pending | |||||
| S2 | supplied / pending | |||||
| S3 | supplied / pending |
Claim and evidence matrix:
| Claim | Direct evidence | Source ID and location | Fact or inference | Confidence | What remains to verify |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| high / medium / low |
An AI has not opened or verified a source unless you supplied it or a browsing tool actually consulted it. Always record the access date. Mark an inference as an inference, even when it seems obvious.
Workflow
- Write a research brief stating the decision, audience, scope, criteria, and constraints.
- Ask the assistant to turn the brief into observable subquestions and search terms.
- Gather sources. Give the assistant the text, excerpts, or links you actually want analyzed.
- Request a structured extraction: claim, quote or data point, source, location, and access date.
- Separate observable facts from inferences, hypotheses, and recommendations.
- Cross-check important claims against at least two independent sources when possible.
- Assign high, medium, or low confidence and state what could change it.
- Check selection bias, outdated dates, promotional language, and incompatible units.
- Write a conclusion limited to the available evidence. State what is unknown.
- Save a sanitized receipt so another person can reproduce or challenge the work.
Example: three suppliers for a café
A café with two locations wants to choose a compostable cup supplier. The brief sets a monthly order of 4,000 units, delivery in Spain, compatible lids, and a maximum budget of 0.22 euros per unit. The owner supplies three technical sheets and one quotation per supplier. The assistant extracts that S1 states industrial compostability certification, S2 only states plant-based material, and S3 offers the lowest price but does not specify the lid. The matrix labels the written statements as facts, marks the possibility of an extra purchase for S3 as an inference, and leaves local waste-handler acceptance of the certification as pending. The provisional decision is to request samples from S1 and S3, not to declare a winner.
Copyable final artifact: sanitized research receipt
# Research receipt
Question or decision:
Research date:
Owner:
Scope and criteria:
## Sources consulted
- S1 | [title or domain] | type | publication date | accessed: YYYY-MM-DD | location:
- S2 | [title or domain] | type | publication date | accessed: YYYY-MM-DD | location:
- S3 | [title or domain] | type | publication date | accessed: YYYY-MM-DD | location:
## Findings
- Fact: [claim] | evidence: [short quote or data] | source: [ID] | confidence: high/medium/low
- Fact: [claim] | evidence: [short quote or data] | source: [ID] | confidence: high/medium/low
## Inferences and limits
- Inference: [what follows and why]
- Not verified: [open item]
- Possible bias or conflict: [description]
## Next control
[test, additional source, or human review]
Failure and safety checks
Do not paste credentials, unnecessary personal data, trade secrets, or restricted documents without authorization. Anonymize names, addresses, and customer numbers. Check that every quote matches the cited source, the access date is real, and percentages are not confused with percentage points. If a source is unavailable to the assistant, mark it pending. If sources conflict, preserve both versions and explain the difference. Do not turn correlation into causation or a marketing page into independent validation.
As a restrained next step, save the receipt and reuse the worksheet for the next investigation. Request a business audit only if this process becomes recurring, collaborative, high-volume, costly, sensitive, or materially blocking.