Source of Truth

What it is

A source of truth is the place a team agrees to trust when two answers conflict. It does not have to contain every detail about a subject, but it does have to make clear which version is current and who is responsible for it. The useful test is not completeness but resolution: when two documents disagree, does this one settle the argument?

Why it matters

Without a designated source, conflicts get resolved by seniority or by whoever last edited something. Knowledge Company treats naming the source as the first move in any reconciliation, because nothing downstream can be checked until it exists. It is also the precondition for automation — no system can flag a contradiction until something has been designated as the side that is right. The designation is per subject, not per organisation: most enterprises and ecosystems have no single source covering every digital artifact. Pursuing one agreed truth for every data element across a company is a named anti-pattern in the agile data literature — One Truth Above All Else.