Main idea

A questionnaire of 115 security questions, prepared from verified facts filed by topic, comes out 80 to 90% complete in about ten minutes. The figure is true, and it misleads.

It doesn't mean that 80 to 90% of the answers are certain and ready to commit the company. It means the document is largely prepared: the known answers are in place, their sources found, the weak points flagged, the missing information turned into precise requests.

Human review remains essential; what changes is where it lands. The reviewer no longer digs through old files or asks the same people again: they verify the commitments, decide what can be said, and focus on what is new or uncertain.

Why it matters

It avoids reading a gain in preparation as a gain in certainty — the reading that would drop the review just when it finally becomes effective.

It also gives the right measure of a preparation setup: not the share of the document filled in, but the time the reviewer spends on what deserves their judgement.

Nuances and limits

The split depends on the questionnaire: a prospect asking about topics never handled before makes the prepared share drop, and the knowledge base then only serves to show it quickly.

The figure is a measure of personal use, over a series of questionnaires; it does not carry over as is to another organization.

Open questions

• How do you measure the quality of a review that now covers only the commitments, when the rest of the document looks finished?