1. Which three claims in the deck would invalidate the thesis if they were wrong? If the team cannot name them, the thesis is probably a mood rather than a hypothesis. If they can, those claims should map to model inputs with names, not vibes.
2. Where does the model stay silent while the narrative is loud? Loud narrative with quiet model lines is where credibility risk concentrates: expansion, retention, pricing power, sales efficiency. Silence is not neutrality; it is an unpriced bet.
3. What evidence would change your mind in the next two weeks? Credibility work is time-bounded. If nothing could falsify the story on a sensible horizon, you are not diligencing; you are deferring.
4. Who owns the bridge between qualitative story and quantitative forecast? If the answer is “everyone,” that often means no one. Ownership matters because reconciliation fails when it is everybody’s secondary task.
5. What is being repeated because it is true, and what is being repeated because it survived the last meeting? Repetition compounds credibility risk. Naming the difference between evidence and familiarity is how ICs keep proportionality between conviction and support.
These questions are not a substitute for sector expertise or financial analysis. They are a minimum standard for narrative hygiene before a deal accumulates organisational weight.
Used consistently, they reduce the number of surprises in IC because they force the team to surface disagreements early, while the cost of changing direction is still low. The point is not to slow every deal; it is to prevent the wrong deals from borrowing the credibility of process.
If a sponsor resists answering them in writing, treat that as signal, not noise. Serious underwriting welcomes explicit tests; narrative-only processes resist them because specificity exposes thin spots.
Run the list in the memo header; make the answers auditable next quarter.