A big consultancy sold a government department a 237-page report. Then someone checked the footnotes.
Ten items. Say your answer out loud before you reveal it.
Read the sentence, guess the meaning of the word in bold, then reveal.
Three terms: own up to · get ahead of · sign off on. Say the right one, then reveal.
One missing word fits every phrase in the group. Say it, then reveal.
Read each part. After it, answer the quick check from memory, then discuss one question.
In July 2025 an Australian government department published a report that had cost it 440,000 Australian dollars. The department was the one that deals with employment and workplace relations. The report was 237 pages long and it looked at the IT system behind welfare penalties, the automatic fines and payment cuts people get when the system thinks they have broken a rule. The firm that wrote it was Deloitte, one of the largest consultancies in the world.
A few weeks later a researcher who works on welfare law started reading it. He stopped at a reference to a book by a professor he knew. He knew the professor, and he knew the professor had never written that book. He kept going and found more. By his count there were up to twenty errors, among them references to academic papers that nobody had written and a quotation from a federal court judgment that the judge had never said.
He told a journalist, and that was when it became a news story.
1. Who wrote the report, and who paid for it?
2. What did the researcher notice first?
3. What kinds of errors did he find?
1. Deloitte wrote it. An Australian government department paid for it, about 440,000 Australian dollars.
2. A reference to a book that the professor named in it had never written.
3. References to papers that did not exist, and a quote from a court judgment that the judge never gave. He counted up to twenty errors.
The department asked Deloitte to look at the report again. Deloitte confirmed that some footnotes and references were wrong. A corrected version appeared in October. The fake quote was gone, the missing papers were gone, and a new line near the front said that part of the work had been done with a generative AI tool, Azure OpenAI. The first version had said nothing about that.
The department said the substance of the report stood and the recommendations were the same. Deloitte said it had settled the matter directly with its client, and it agreed to repay the final instalment of the contract. Asked whether AI had caused the errors, the firm did not answer at the time.
A senator said that this was not enough. She thought the whole fee should come back.
1. What changed in the corrected version?
2. What did the department say about the report's recommendations?
3. What did Deloitte agree to do about the money?
1. The fake quote and the non-existent papers were removed, and a note was added saying a generative AI tool had been used.
2. That the substance was kept and the recommendations did not change.
3. To repay the final instalment of the contract, so a part of the fee, not all of it.
It is easy to say that a big firm should have known better, and perhaps it should. But nobody here seems to have used AI in a strange way. People use it to draft, to summarise and to tidy up references. The tool writes a footnote that looks right, with an author, a year and a journal, and the person reading at six in the evening has no reason to doubt it.
What the case shows is who carries the problem afterwards. The client did not hire a language model. It hired a firm, and the firm's name was on the cover. When the errors came out, nobody asked what the software had done. They asked who had signed off.
For a small consultancy with one or two clients, that matters even more. A large firm can lose a fee and carry on. A small one has a handful of relationships, and each one is built on the client believing what you tell them.
1. Why would a footnote written by AI be easy to miss?
2. Who did people ask about after the errors came out?
3. Why does the case matter more for a small firm?
1. It looks right: it has an author, a year and a journal, so a tired reader has no reason to doubt it.
2. Who had signed off on the report, not what the software had done.
3. A small firm has only a few relationships, and each depends on the client trusting what the firm says.
When something has gone wrong, most people either hide it for a day or bury it in explanation. The Straight Account is four short moves, said in this order. Together they take under a minute: say what happened, say what it touches, say what you are doing, say what will change. Then stop talking and let the client respond.
Each line could be said to a client after a mistake. Which move is it doing, or is it not doing any? Choose, then check.
1. Excuse — it moves the problem onto the software. The client hired you, not the tool.
2. Owns it — plain, specific and in the first person plural. No hedging.
3. Vague — it does not say what, where or how many, so the client has to imagine the worst.
4. Fixes it — an action with a deadline the client can hold you to.
5. Excuse — it may be true, but it is about everyone else, and the client wants to know about you.
6. Owns it — it names the exact thing that was skipped, which is more convincing than a general apology.
7. Vague — no action, no time. It sounds like a way of ending the call.
8. Fixes it — a real change in how you work, which is what the client is worried about.
Do not over-apologise. One clear apology is enough. Three in a row makes the client look after you instead of the other way round.
Do not guess. If you do not yet know how far the problem goes, say so and give a time when you will: I don't know yet. I'll know by five and I'll call you then.
It works on a call and in writing. In an email the four moves become four short paragraphs. Keep them in the same order.
When you report a problem, the tense tells the client how you see it. A few small choices separate a clear account from an evasive one.
Put the verb in brackets into the correct form: past simple or present perfect.
1. We (just / find) a mistake in the figures you received.
2. The mistake (happen) when we copied the table last Thursday.
3. I (check) every source this morning, and two of them do not exist.
4. We (not / tell) you that we used an AI tool for the first draft, and I am sorry.
1. have just found — news with a result that matters now
2. happened — finished event with a time (last Thursday)
3. have checked — this morning is still part of today, and the result matters now. (checked is also possible if the morning is over.)
4. did not tell — a finished moment in the past. (have not told is also possible if you are still thinking of the present situation.)
Rewrite each sentence so that the speaker owns it. Do not use the passive.
1. Some references were not checked.
2. Mistakes were made in the second section.
3. The client was not told about the tool.
4. An error has been found in the numbers.
1. We did not check some of the references.
2. We made mistakes in the second section.
3. We did not tell the client about the tool. (or: I did not tell you)
4. We have found an error in the numbers.
Now report a small mistake of your own, real or invented, using one present perfect, one past simple and one should have.
Three conversations a consultant could have this month. Read the situation, take a moment, and speak. Aim for about a minute each.
A client you have worked with for six months says, in a friendly way, By the way, do you use AI for my project? You do. Tell them what you use it for, what you never leave to it, and how you check what it gives you. Do not apologise for using it, and do not oversell it.
On Thursday afternoon you find that a market figure in a document you sent on Tuesday came from an AI tool, and you cannot find the source. It may be wrong. The client has already shown the document to their board. Phone them. Use the four moves: what happened, what it touches, what you are doing, what changes. The person you are speaking with plays the client, and may interrupt.
A client in a recruitment business wants to use AI to rank a thousand CVs and send you only the top twenty. They want your view by the end of the meeting. Give a recommendation, two conditions you would set, and one thing that worries you. Then stop and let them respond.