A review area reporting Not Assessed, or a finding saying a question is unanswered, is most often correct: the material does not answer it. But if you are looking at a document you know contains the answer, work through this in order. Check the evidence path first and the model last — that is the order in which the cause usually lies.
1. Is the document in this project?
Material is scoped to a project. A document uploaded to a different project — or to the sample project — is not evidence here. Open Documents and confirm the file is listed against this project.
2. Did it finish indexing?
The document list shows each file's state. A file still parsing is not yet retrievable. Long scanned PDFs take the longest, because every page has to be read as an image before its text exists at all.
There is a specific trap here. For the first few seconds after an upload, a document can be found by its literal wording but not by a paraphrase, because matching meaning depends on indexing having completed. If you uploaded a file and searched for a phrase that is not in it verbatim, you may have searched during that window. Wait for the indexed state and search again.
3. Can you find the passage by searching the project?
Use project search on a distinctive phrase from the document — a proper noun, a product name, a number.
- Search finds it, the section does not use it. The evidence exists and retrieval works; the question probably did not connect to it. Re-run the area, and if it still misses, tell us: a probe that cannot reach a document it should reach is a defect in our question library, not something you should work around.
- Search does not find it either. The document is not retrievable. Check the parse result — a PDF that is one flat image with no text layer, a spreadsheet where the content is in a chart object rather than cells, or a password-protected file will all upload happily and yield nothing readable. Re-export it and re-upload.
4. Is it the right kind of evidence?
A question can find a document and still record the question as unanswered. A policy document is evidence that a policy exists; it is not evidence that anyone follows it, and the platform will not treat one as the other. That is not a failure to find evidence — it is the finding.
5. Was it said rather than written?
If management answered a question verbally, the answer is not in the material until somebody records it. Capture it as an analyst file, then re-run the area, and the finding will cite the note rather than resting on a recollection. See Analyst files.
What not to conclude
Do not conclude the analysis is being lazy and paper over it by editing a finding to assert something the material does not support. The whole value of the report is that it does not do this. If the evidence is real and we are not reaching it, that is our bug — raise it with a support ticket naming the project, the document and the question.