Choosing the Tax-Season Reviewer
A 10-person accounting firm needs one temporary reviewer for the eight weeks of tax season. The work is repetitive, deadline-driven, and errors are costly. Three internal candidates are available. Dana has 12 years of review experience, but she is the only person trained on the firm's largest payroll client and currently handles that account alone. Eli has 2 years of experience and has never done review work, but he scored 98% on the firm's practice audits against a 91% team average and has finished every assigned task early. Fran has 6 years of experience and reviews well, but she has 3 weeks of approved leave scheduled inside the eight-week window. The partner must decide by Friday.
1. Which candidate does the evidence best support, and what is the main risk in that choice?
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Best supported: Eli.
Map each fact to a requirement:
- Errors are costly → Eli has the strongest accuracy evidence (98% vs. 91% average), and accuracy on audits is the closest available proxy for review quality.
- Deadline-driven → Eli finishes early, which is direct evidence of reliability under deadlines.
- Eight-week full coverage → Eli is available all eight weeks; Fran loses 3 of 8 (37.5%).
- Cost of reassignment → Dana's move leaves the firm's largest payroll client uncovered, which is a second problem created by the fix.
Main risk: Eli has never reviewed. Accuracy at his own work does not prove he can catch other people's errors, which is a different skill. The safe version of this hire pairs Eli with a brief training or a spot-check of his first week's output.
2. The partner says: "Dana has the most experience, so she is the most qualified." Identify the flaw in that reasoning.
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The flaw is treating one attribute as decisive without checking whether it is the binding constraint.
- The role is temporary and eight weeks long, so availability and ramp-up speed matter at least as much as depth of experience.
- "Most qualified" is not a property a person has in the abstract; it is relative to the requirements of this job. Dana's experience is real but her reassignment creates a vacancy on a key client - a cost that does not appear in the word "qualified."
- "Most experience" also ignores diminishing returns: 12 years versus 6 years may add little on repetitive review work, while the 98% accuracy figure speaks directly to the error-cost requirement.
Better form of the argument: Dana may still be the right choice if the payroll account can be covered - that is a factual question, not a seniority claim.
3. What single fact would most change your recommendation, and why that one?
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Whether the payroll client can be reassigned or deferred for eight weeks without client harm.
Why this one: it is the only fact that can remove the objection to Dana, who otherwise has the strongest direct evidence for the core task (12 years of review) and no availability gap. If the account can be staffed, Dana becomes the lowest-risk pick. If it cannot, Dana is disqualified regardless of experience, and the choice returns to Eli versus Fran.
Second-order check to ask with it: whether anyone can supervise or spot-check Eli in week one. That is the only fact that changes the Eli branch of the decision.