In 30 seconds
Sources will sometimes disagree. Decide in advance which one wins, or when the workflow should stop and ask a person, rather than letting an AI silently pick one and answer confidently.
Why this comes up
Even with authoritative sources chosen, conflicts happen. A policy is updated in one place but not another. Two systems hold different values for the same field. A document contradicts itself between sections.
A person often notices the conflict and checks. An AI usually does not. It retrieves whichever passage matches best and produces a smooth answer, hiding the fact that the sources disagreed at all. That is the risk you are designing against.
Design the conflict response
Use a source hierarchy
If you have ranked your sources into a source hierarchy, many conflicts resolve automatically: when two sources disagree, the higher-ranked one wins. Write this rule down so it is applied consistently.
Escalate genuine conflicts
Some conflicts should not be resolved silently, even with a hierarchy, because either answer could be seriously wrong. For these, the safe response is to stop and route the case to a person, not to guess. This is the conflict escalation idea in practice.
Make the conflict visible
When the workflow detects that sources disagree, record it. A conflict that keeps recurring points to a source that needs fixing, which is more valuable to know than any single answer.
Fix the cause, not just the case
A conflict is usually a symptom: an outdated copy, a missing update, two systems that should be in sync and are not. Resolving the individual case is necessary, but tracing the conflict back to its cause, often a source of truth problem, is what stops it recurring.
A small example
An assistant gave inconsistent refund windows because two policies disagreed. The team set the HR-approved policy as the higher-ranked source, so routine questions resolved automatically, and flagged any detected conflict for review. The recurring flag led them to the outdated copy, which they retired.
What this does not solve
A conflict rule decides which source to believe; it does not make either source correct. If both are wrong, the workflow will still be wrong. Handling conflicts reduces silent errors but does not replace keeping sources accurate.
Good enough to move on when
- There is a rule for which source wins in a routine conflict.
- High-stakes conflicts escalate to a person instead of being guessed.
- Detected conflicts are recorded.
- Recurring conflicts are traced to their cause.
