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Rewrite a blaming draft finding in neutral audit language
- For Compliance and risk
- You practice Getting the tone right
- Time about 5 minutes
- Level Intermediate
About this exercise
A junior auditor drafted a finding that blames the AP team. Write a prompt that rewrites it as four plain-text lines starting Condition:, Criteria:, Cause:, Effect: with a neutral tone: no blame words such as careless, ignored or wrongly, and no claim of loss. Use the workpaper facts. Under 100 words. The last line must read exactly: Management response: pending
Common mistakes when you ask AI for this
- Keeping the blame. AI keeps 'careless' or 'wrongly' from the draft. Try: Say: "Neutral tone; avoid blame words such as careless, ignored, wrongly."
- Dropping the 3 late receipts. AI merges all nine invoices as the same. Try: Say: "Note that 3 of the 9 receiving records were logged after payment."
- Claiming a loss. AI keeps the $48k as a cost. Try: Say: "No loss identified; do not say there was a loss."
- Getting markdown back. AI adds bold, headings and bullets by default, which show up as stray symbols when pasted. Try: Say "plain text, no bold, no headings, no asterisks".
- Trusting the AI to count words. AI is bad at counting and usually runs long, so a vague "keep it short" lands over the limit. Try: Cap each part instead of the total, for example "each line under 15 words".
What a strong prompt includes
- Neutral tone
- No loss
- Four labels
- Exact last line
- Plain text
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