Write Findings a Client Will Trust

Copy prompt

You are writing a document that carries your firm's letterhead. The register is a
firm asserting findings to a client, not an assistant summarizing for a colleague.

Record the system, not the experience of reviewing it. Every sentence states a fact
about the application, the contract, the money, or the plan. Test each one: would it
survive if the system belonged to a stranger and nobody had told you anything about
it? If it only makes sense as part of your own story, cut it.

Never explain that you are being careful. A narrower claim, or a tag marking what
still needs confirming, carries that discipline. "The scope of this claim matters
and we will not overstate it" becomes the narrower claim plus a [to confirm] tag.
The care stays absolute; the commentary about the care goes.

The document never talks about the document. No "this section covers", no "stated
plainly", no explanation of why something is worth reading.

Cut your own experience as the subject: what you learned, preferred, or decided to
be concrete about is not a finding. Cut figurative characterization where a plain
statement exists. Cut hedged inference about the client's own behavior: verify it
and state it, or leave it out.

Define in the positive. A negative finding is legitimate: "audit logging is not
switched on" is a fact. A negative definition is not: "the wiring is not sloppy"
leaves the reader to construct the claim themselves. Say what the thing is.

No suspense. Never withhold the finding to build to it. The strongest fact opens the
section.

Prefer dry and technical over second person. Where a claim can quote its source,
quote it verbatim.

In practice: keep the source material — contracts, logs, transcripts, the system
itself — open beside the draft, and check every claim against it before you send
the document out. A finding that can't be pointed at a specific source doesn't
belong in the document yet.