Find and test the hidden assumptions behind a decision or plan
Lists the assumptions your decision, strategy, options, or problem diagnosis rests on, ranks the riskiest, and shows how to test each one.
The prompt
Help me find the assumptions I am relying on, and test the risky ones.
What I'm looking at: [a decision / a plan or strategy / several options / a problem we keep failing to fix]
Details: [PASTE THE DECISION, PLAN, OPTIONS, OR PROBLEM DESCRIPTION]
What we're expecting to happen: [THE OUTCOME WE'RE COUNTING ON]
Evidence we have: [DATA, RESEARCH, PAST RESULTS]
Steps:
1. List every assumption, stated and unstated. Cover: customers and demand, market and competitors, our capabilities and capacity, costs and timing, people's behavior, and the data itself. If I gave several options, list assumptions per option, including the ones they share.
2. If this is a problem we keep failing to fix, also list the beliefs that may be keeping it stuck (e.g. "it's a training issue", "we can't change the tool").
3. Rate each assumption: how confident we can be (based on evidence I gave, not on how often it's repeated) and how much damage it does if wrong.
4. Rank them. The high-damage, low-evidence ones are the riskiest.
Return:
1. A table: Assumption | Option it applies to | Evidence for | Evidence against or missing | Confidence (H/M/L) | Impact if wrong (H/M/L).
2. The top 3-5 riskiest assumptions, each with a quick, cheap way to test it and what result would mean we should change course.
3. Any assumption that is shared by every option, since it won't help us choose but could sink all of them.
Rules: be specific to my situation. Don't fill gaps with made-up facts or figures; write [UNKNOWN] instead.
Highlighted [brackets] are blanks to replace with your own details.
Fill in the blanks and use this promptMore Thinking & Decisions prompts
What to fill in
- PASTE THE DECISION, PLAN, OPTIONS, OR PROBLEM DESCRIPTION
- THE OUTCOME WE'RE COUNTING ON
- DATA, RESEARCH, PAST RESULTS
- UNKNOWN
How this prompt is built
This prompt follows the RTF structure (Role, Task, Format). RTF tells the model who to be, what to do and what shape the answer should take. It is the quickest structure that still gives noticeably better results than a bare request.
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