The Paper Trail Test

Want to know if you're audit-ready? Give yourself the paper trail test. It takes ten minutes.

Pick one decision your AI system made last month — a flagged transaction, a screened résumé, a recommended treatment, whatever your system does. Now try to reconstruct the story. What data went in? Which version of the model made the call? Who approved putting that version live? Did a human review the outcome? Has anything changed since?

If you can answer all five, congratulations — you have an audit trail, whether you call it that or not.

If you can't, don't panic. You've just learned exactly where your gaps are, which is more useful than a clean bill of health. Every question you couldn't answer is a line item for your documentation to-do list.

Run this test once a quarter. It costs nothing, needs no consultants, and tells you the truth about your readiness. Auditors basically run a formal version of this same test — same questions, fancier suits.

The goal was never perfection. The goal is being able to tell the story of your own system. If you can't tell it, nobody else can either — and that's when audits get painful.

I explain frameworks; I don't give legal counsel.