Research
What service firms ask about AI before they adopt it
We wrote down every question people asked us about AI while they were using it at work. Most weren’t about what AI can do. They were about the rules for using it.
45
13
By theme
What the questions were about
Governance and rollout is the largest theme by a clear margin. People were asking whether a policy should come first, who owns what AI produces, and what to tell clients.
Method
How the questions were collected
The questions were asked out loud, unprompted, in training sessions, discovery calls and 1:1 set-ups. There was no survey and no list to choose from. Each was written down as it was asked.
They are logged without a name or a company. 36 of the 45 have been written up with an answer so far.
Limits
What this can’t tell you
- 9 organizations is a small base. These are the questions our clients and prospects asked, not a sample of all firms.
- People who ask questions out loud may differ from those who don’t.
- The counts say what was asked, not how many people were worried about it.
The ones asked at more than one firm
- Is my data being used to train the AI, and can I turn it off?
- We suspect a lot of shadow AI and have no policy. Should the policy come first?
- Do we have to tell clients when AI helped produce their work?
- Do I have to upload the report every month, or does it remember?
- What does connecting my email or spreadsheets actually unlock, compared with copy-paste?
- I just have to trust it. I can trust it, right?
- How do I know it didn’t miss something?
- Why does it solve my problem sometimes and completely miss other times?
Where this leads
Use it
You are welcome to cite these figures. Please link to this page and state the base.