In 30 seconds

When several documents or systems hold the same kind of knowledge, decide which one is authoritative, the one to trust when they disagree. Base it on ownership, currency and closeness to the decision, and write the ranking down.

Why this comes up

Knowledge is rarely stored in one place. A policy might exist in an official handbook, a team wiki, an old PDF and someone's slides from a training session. When these disagree, and they will, both people and AI need to know which one wins.

Without an agreed answer, an AI retrieves whichever passage matches the wording best, which may be the least authoritative one.

What makes a source authoritative

Rank sources by asking:

  • Who owns it? A source with a named owner who maintains it beats an orphaned document nobody updates.
  • Is it current? A source with a recent review date beats one of unknown age.
  • Is it official? A source the organization formally stands behind beats an informal copy.
  • Is it close to the decision? The system where a value is actually set beats a summary of it.

The best source usually scores well on several of these at once.

Write down the ranking

For each topic, record which source is authoritative and which are secondary. This becomes a source hierarchy: a clear order of trust. It tells your workflow, and your colleagues, which source to believe when there is a conflict.

Track where knowledge came from

For any piece of knowledge you rely on, know its origin: which source, which version, when. This is its provenance, and it is what lets you check and defend an answer later. An AI that can cite its source is far more trustworthy than one that cannot.

A small example

Staff got different answers about parental leave depending on which document they found. Declaring the HR system the authoritative source, marking the old intranet page as superseded, and pointing the assistant only at the authoritative source ended the contradictions.

What this does not solve

Choosing an authoritative source does not make it correct, and it does not resolve cases where two authoritative sources genuinely conflict. For that, you need a way to handle conflicting sources and, sometimes, a human decision.

Good enough to move on when

  • Each important topic has a named authoritative source.
  • Secondary sources are ranked or marked as superseded.
  • Sources are chosen for ownership, currency and officialness.
  • You can trace where a relied-upon fact came from.