Triage the control workbook

Objectives

The quarterly control workbook has been circulating by email for three months. You have one hour before the pack goes out and you can only escalate what genuinely misstates the programme's position.

Raise the rows where the workbook reports a control state that is not true. Leave the rows that are merely untidy.

List only the lines that qualify, worst first. Severity is one of: critical | high | medium | low. Add or delete rows as needed.

S-1  Row 12 formula =SUM(D2:D40) but the data now runs to D63; 23 controls excluded from the totals.
S-2  Row 4 status hard-typed "Effective" over a formula that read "Fail" in the previous version.
S-3  Row 19 owner column reads "Dave" with no surname or team.
S-4  Row 27 has inconsistent date formats, mixing 03/04 and 4-Mar.
S-5  Row 31 links to an external workbook on a departed employee's personal drive; value shows #REF!.
S-6  Row 38 uses a different shade of green for pass than the rest of the sheet.
S-7  Row 44 marked "Effective" with the evidence cell empty.
S-8  Row 51 uses merged cells in the header, so filtering the sheet is awkward.

Step-by-step hints

The guided walkthrough, in full. It is free: no XP cost, and it does not touch the paid hint ladder or the reveal gate.

1. Step 1

   Read the fixture as a population, not a list

   Read the eight notes and ask a single question of each: does the pack now say something untrue about control effectiveness? That is the line between an escalation and a housekeeping task.

2. Step 2

   Decide what actually qualifies

   Four notes change what the workbook reports; four do not. Formatting drift, a first-name owner and a colour mismatch are all real problems and none of them misstate a result.

   The right findings are raised

3. Step 3

   Resist the loud lines

   The tempting inclusions are the ones that look sloppy. Sloppiness is evidence of process weakness, not a misstatement: put it in the remediation plan, not the escalation.

   Benign lines are left out

4. Step 4

   Grade the exposure, not the wording

   Grade by how the error reaches the reader. A silent wrong number is worse than a visible error, because #REF! at least announces itself.

   An overridden result is worse still: it is the only one that implies intent.

   Severity matches the actual exposure

5. Step 5

   Rank so the first line is the one you act on

   Put the row that most changes the board's understanding first. Ask which single row, left unfixed, would most embarrass the programme in six months.

   Ranked worst first

Rules summary

• XP on pass

  40 bonus XP the first time every check goes green.

• Paid hints

  2 available. Each costs 25% of the lab XP (about 10 XP).

• Reveal solution

  Scores 0 XP and unlocks only after 3 check runs.

• Attempt cap

  60 check runs per learner. The runner warns you in the last 10.

• Drafts

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• Walkthrough

  Always free and never penalised: use it before spending a hint.