B.5.PI:1 - Problem frame

Use this pattern to make room for a useful question in work that people or agents currently treat as ordinary. Reports arrive, calculations run, repairs succeed, and nobody asks whether the way of obtaining or using those results needs examination. Use it also when someone says that an explanation misses something but cannot yet say what. A known error, an anomaly label and a request for help are not prerequisites.

Start at a small occasion already connected with the work: preparing a handover, demonstrating a result, explaining a consequential choice, or resuming work after a change. Recover what the result is supposed to enable and examine one available episode of obtaining and using it, including the adjustments that made it succeed. A performer can do this while preparing their own work; a colleague or team can arrange the occasion. It takes access and attention, even if only briefly.

The useful result is a question with an attainable next move, an early cue retained for further consideration, or a reasoned continuation without change. Here, inquiry includes a short question to a colleague or consultation of an existing explanation; it need not become a research project. The method helps bring an unexamined part of work into consideration. It does not promise that every hidden difficulty will be found.

Use an adequate existing answer directly. When the question is already clear, use its subject method. When a known useful method merely goes unnoticed at the right moment, A.15.11 helps arrange that encounter. Continuous monitoring, statistical anomaly detection and a full audit have their own methods; they are not mandatory implementations of this one.