Asking for a Viewpoint Without Overtrusting It

Unit ID: PAW-M04-U02 Estimated active time: 20-25 minutes

Viewpoints are useful for finding gaps

Asking a tool to look at your work from a particular angle is one of the more genuinely useful things it does.

> Read this plan as a cautious finance manager would. What would they ask?

You get a list of questions. Some will be obvious, some will be irrelevant, and one or two will be things you had not considered.

That is the value: coverage, not verdicts.

The trap

The same output reads like a judgement. "A finance manager would reject this" sounds like information about finance managers.

It is not. It is a plausible pattern of what such objections tend to look like. It has not consulted anyone.

So use the questions and discard the conclusions.

Ask for questions, not verdicts

Compare:

> Would a safeguarding lead approve this?

with:

> List the questions a safeguarding lead would most likely ask about this, in priority order. Do not say whether they would approve it.

The second is usable. The first invites you to treat a guess as an answer.

A multi-viewpoint review

VIEWPOINT SWEEP

For each viewpoint, ask for QUESTIONS only:

Viewpoint            What they are protecting
------------------   -----------------------------------
the person affected  fairness, dignity, being heard
the person doing it  workload, clarity, being blamed
the budget holder    cost, commitment, reversibility
the reviewer         evidence, precedent, defensibility
the sceptic          what has been assumed without checking

Then: mark each question as ANSWERED, NEEDS WORK, or NOT APPLICABLE.

The marking step is the point. An unmarked list of forty questions helps nobody.

Never let a viewpoint stand in for a person

If a real safeguarding lead, a real finance manager or a real affected person can be asked, ask them.

A simulated viewpoint is a rehearsal. It is useful before the conversation and it is not a substitute for it.

Mini practice

Take a plan or draft of yours.

Run the viewpoint sweep, asking only for questions.

Mark each question. Then identify which one you would actually take to a real person.

Mark complete