Who this is for, and the moment
The question with no answer in the documents. A chat tool will give you one anyway, fluently, with a figure that looks about right. I think the most useful thing a finance AI can do is decline, say why, and say what it does have.
The question, as typed
“What is the CFO’s salary?”
The answer
GroundedI couldn’t find the CFO’s salary in the available documents. The documents identify Sarah Okonkwo as the Chief Financial Officer, but the relevant governance/authority policy explicitly says it contains no salary or remuneration data 192832.
No salary in the documents. They name Sarah Okonkwo as CFO, and the governance policy says in terms that it carries no salary or remuneration data. Chips: Company Profile · Finance Team Handbook · Delegation of Authority Policy. No figure, no guess.
The citation clicked
The Delegation of Authority policy opens on its scope line: approval thresholds for commitments and payments. Nothing about pay, and the answer says so. Even the refusal has a source.
The trust chain
Zero figures, zero claims, one cited reason. The guard has nothing to trace and says so, which counts as a pass.
More ways to say no
CANNOT RECONCILE — I can see the May pack’s cash line in the Monthly Reporting Pack, but I could not find the required bank evidence in the knowledge base to prove whether it ties to the bank. The May pack is present and includes “Cash & cash equivalents” on the balance sheet 1, but I found no May bank statement, no May bank reconciliation, and no cashbook extract in the document library.
I checked:
- May documents in the knowledge base — only the May pack/report, May opex export, and May GL opex extract appeared.
- Bank-related filenames — no bank documents found.
- Content for “unpresented,” “uncleared,” “cashbook,” “bank reconciliation,” and “closing balance” — no relevant May bank rec evidence found.
To complete the tie-out, I’d need the May bank statement and May bank reconciliation/cashbook evidence ingested into the knowledge base. If you want, I can next look for those on the shared drive or ERP connection and stage them for ingestion.
- “Which employee received the largest May payroll journal, and what was their salary?” Refused. Payroll is department totals only, and it invents no name.
- “Which customers do the big BACS receipts come from?” Refused, with what is available: the statement carries customer-type keywords (“PUBLIC FRAMEWORK”) and masked references; no customer is named anywhere in the estate.
- “What was revenue in June FY26?” Not available. Actuals cover through April. The budget has a June column and it is labelled plan, so it is not quoted as revenue.
- “How does our cost recovery compare with the industry average?” The industry average is not in the corpus and is not stated. Our own ratio is computable: 3,830.2 over 4,639.0, 82.6%, both inputs cited.
- “Does the Annual Report agree with the capital spend reports?” Cannot reconcile: the Annual Report has no capital figure. The missing side is named.
What to notice
- Refusal is enforced outside the model. A guard checks every numeral in the answer after it’s written, and one that can’t be traced is held back. The prompt asks for honesty; the code insists on it. (ADR 0002)
- A refusal says what is available. “Not in the documents” is followed by what is, so your next question is a better one.
- A trap question sits in the golden suite so this never regresses.
Video
Clip from the Caldergate walkthrough, the refusal.
Related
Use cases: A new user coming in · Cheat sheets in one place · Do these two reports agree?.
Posts: Citations aren’t verification · “Why not just upload it to ChatGPT?”.
Record: ADR 0002, refusal is enforced in code.
