You will apply checking levels, critique and verification to three real pieces of work.
Checking is easy to agree with and easy to skip. When a deadline is close and an answer looks fine, the light read becomes the default for everything. This exercise makes the checking visible: you take three real outputs you were about to use, apply the full routine from this module, and write down what you found and how long it took. Most people are surprised by one of those two numbers.
Set aside about thirty minutes. You will use lesson 7.1, Match the check to what is at stake, to choose the level, lesson 7.2, Ask for a critique, and know its limits, for the critique, and lesson 7.3, Checking numbers, quotes, sources and code, for the checks themselves.
Choose three AI outputs you intended to use, at work or at home, that you have not yet sent or acted on. If you have nothing pending, use three you used recently. The exercise works either way, though finding an error in something already sent is less comfortable.
Aim for a spread of stakes. One low-stakes output, one that goes to another person, and one that involves money, law, health or someone's job make a good set. Ravi, the cafe group's marketing executive from earlier in this module, picked a set of Instagram caption ideas, a summary of supplier quotes for his manager, and an answer about whether his part-time staff were entitled to paid public holidays.
Write down a checking level for each output, light, full or primary source, and then do the checks that level calls for.
Ravi's captions got a light read. He looked for anything off-brand or obviously wrong and found one caption that mentioned a dish the cafes had stopped serving.
The supplier summary got a full read and a fact check. He recalculated the price difference between the two quotes, opened both PDFs to check each figure, and checked that the summary's description of delivery terms matched the documents. While the price difference was right, one supplier's minimum order quantity was wrong: the summary said 50 units, the quote said 50 cartons of 12.
The public holiday answer got a primary source check. Though the assistant's answer was confident and detailed, Ravi went to the Ministry of Manpower website and found its guidance on part-time employees' entitlements. The answer was broadly in line with it but left out a condition that applied to some of his staff. He would not have known that from the assistant's answer alone.
Take the output that matters most and run a critique in a fresh chat, using the three questions from lesson 7.2: the three weakest points, the claims most likely to be wrong, and what a sceptical reader would object to, naming who that reader is.
Compare what the critique found with what your own checks found. Ravi ran it on the supplier summary, with his manager as the sceptical reader. It pointed out that the summary did not mention payment terms, which his manager would certainly ask about. It did not flag the minimum order error, which only checking the PDF had caught. That is the pattern lesson 7.2 described: critique is good at gaps and weak at facts.
For each output, record the checking level, every error you found, how you found it and how long the checking took. Be precise about time, since part of the point is to learn what checking actually costs you.
Ravi's sheet, in short: captions, light, one error found by reading, two minutes. Supplier summary, full, one error found by opening the PDF and one gap found by the critique, twelve minutes. Public holiday answer, primary source, one missing condition found on the ministry's site, eight minutes. In total, twenty-two minutes for three outputs and four problems, any one of which could have caused him trouble.
Your audit sheet has a row for each of the three outputs, with columns for the checking level, errors found, the method that found each one and the time taken. Below it, write one change you will make to your routine. It should be specific enough to act on. "Check more carefully" does not count. Ravi's was: "Open the source PDF for every figure in a summary of quotes, because the summary changes units."
Over time, the errors you find tell you where your assistant tends to slip in your kind of work, and the times show you that careful checking usually costs minutes. Gather your three outputs before you begin, and decide which of them matters most.
Produce an audit sheet for three outputs listing checking level, errors found, method and time spent, and one change you will make to your routine.
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