What should an AI assistant do when two documents disagree?
Define how an AI assistant handles conflicting company documents, including authority, scope, effective dates and escalation.
A sales deck says a feature is available. A product note says it is in testing. An AI assistant can produce a fluent answer from either source. The team needs a rule for deciding which source applies.
Treat disagreement as a condition to resolve, not a writing problem to smooth over.
Identify the exact conflict
Ask the assistant to state the two claims and link to their sources. “The documents are inconsistent” is too vague. “The sales deck says all plans include exports; the pricing record limits exports to paid plans” gives an owner something concrete to fix.
Check whether the documents actually describe the same thing. A regional offer, a customer exception and the standard policy may differ legitimately. Dates, audience, product version and customer scope belong beside the claim.
Name an authority for each subject
The newest document does not automatically win. A recently edited presentation can still quote an old policy. Assign authority by subject: the approved pricing record for standard prices, the release record for availability, and the signed agreement for a particular customer's commitments.
Write this map down where both people and assistants can find it. Keep it small enough to maintain. A complicated ranking system that nobody reviews soon becomes another conflicting source.
Make uncertainty visible
For a hypothetical conflicting price, a useful response is:
The current pricing record lists £49. The older campaign brief lists £39 for a promotion whose end date is unclear. I can draft the proposal, but the account owner needs to confirm eligibility before it is sent.
The assistant can continue the reversible parts of the task while holding the disputed claim for review. It should not invent a compromise or assume the cheaper offer still applies.
Repair the source after resolving the task
Record which claim won, why it applied and who confirmed it. Correct or label the stale document so the next person does not repeat the investigation. If both sources remain valid, add their scopes explicitly.
A team learns little from correcting one answer. It learns much more from fixing the source relationship that produced the wrong answer in the first place.