Deterministic knowledge checks in the data-integrity projection; not a graded or credentialed assessment.
Indicates orientation only. It is not a qualification, license, or certification, and does not replace employer training, supervision, or professional judgment.
WHAT IT LOOKS LIKE · 5
- Records the observation at the time it is made, at the place it is made, rather than transcribing it later from a note.
- Signs for work they personally did, and declines to sign for work they did not witness, including when asked by someone senior.
- Corrects an error by striking through, initialling and dating it, leaving the original entry legible instead of overwriting it.
- Raises a record weakness — a missing entry, an unattributed change, a form that cannot be completed as written — to Quality rather than working around it.
- Treats a printout, a spreadsheet and an instrument file as records with the same expectations, not as informal working copies.
HOW IT IS DEMONSTRATED AT WORK
A supervisor would look for completed batch or laboratory records with contemporaneous entries and no retrospective blocks, corrections made in the recognised way, and at least one occasion where this person stopped and escalated rather than completing a record they could not honestly complete. The last is the strongest evidence, because it costs something. Training attendance shows exposure to the expectation; it does not show the person met it under pressure.
WHERE IT IS COMMONLY WEAK
It fails under time pressure and under hierarchy. The most common pattern is not falsification but deferral — entries batched at the end of a shift because the line was running, which quietly converts a contemporaneous record into a recollection. The second is the countersignature given out of deference, where someone signs for a step they did not see because the person asking outranks them. Both look like cooperation at the time, and both are what an investigator finds first.
WHAT TEACHES IT · 2
- LEARNING MODULEFoundations: Records, Evidence & Data Integrity
- TOPICData Integrity (ALCOA+)
WHAT EXERCISES IT · 0
Nothing exercises this yet. 10 scenarios are published and none is linked to this entry — we would rather say so than point you at the closest one.
See what your own record shows against this entry — and what it does not.
Where you stand →