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The Audit Of Will

The Audit of Will is a diagnostic lens that reveals how organizations create trust or harm through their daily decisions. It exposes alignment, drift, burden, and risk—providing the evidence needed for SHL and completing the Ledger of Will’s architecture. With AI making systemic truth easier to see, the question is no longer whether we can measure Bad Will, but whether we’re willing to look.

INTRODUCTION — THE LENS THAT REVEALS THE SYSTEM’S TRUTH

The Ledger of Will gives us the language to understand systems —
Will (impact) and Faith (intention).
SHL gives us the mathematics to quantify the cost of drift.

But leaders also need a lens:
a practical way to see where a system stands now,
how it is moving,
and where its weight is falling.

This is the purpose of The Audit of Will.

The Audit is not an external audit of numbers.
It is an internal audit of alignment —
the structural examination of:

  • what the system consistently produces,
  • how it distributes burden,
  • where contradictions accumulate,
  • and whether authority carries the weight it creates.

It reveals the real state of a system’s Will
and generates the evidence SHL uses to quantify Bad Will as liability.

Together, the three pieces form a coherent ecosystem:

  • The Ledger → the language
  • SHL → the measurement
  • The Audit → the lens

This page outlines that lens.

SECTION I — THE PURPOSE OF THE AUDIT

The Audit of Will helps a leader understand:

  • 1. Where the system stands

(Stewardship, Drift, Performance, or Extraction)

  • 2. Where the system is moving

(toward alignment or away from it)

  • 3. Who is carrying the system’s weight

(the burden map)

The Audit does not assign moral blame.
It reveals structural truth.

Where SHL measures harm,
the Audit reveals the architecture that produces it.

Where the Ledger explains alignment and drift,
the Audit provides evidence.

This is how a system tells the truth of itself.

SECTION II — THE FIVE DIMENSIONS OF THE AUDIT

Each dimension includes:

  1. a diagnostic question
  2. observable signals
  3. yes/no checklist

1. DIRECTION

Is the system moving toward alignment or away from it?

Diagnostic Question:
What direction do repeated decisions form?

Signals:

  • Purpose is practiced
  • Decisions hold consistency
  • Contradictions are resolved early
  • Pressure does not distort the path
  • Trajectory is clear, not chaotic

Checklist:

  • ☐ Decisions reinforce purpose
  • ☐ Contradictions are confronted
  • ☐ Pressure doesn’t override coherence
  • ☐ Leadership behavior matches messaging
  • ☐ Movement is toward clarity

If <3 boxes checked → drift is forming.

2. BURDEN

Where does weight settle in the system?

Diagnostic Question:
Who carries the weight of the system’s choices?

Signals:

  • Responsibility matches authority
  • Burden isn’t pushed downward
  • Workload is humane
  • Invisible weight is recognized
  • Structural pressure is owned

Checklist:

  • ☐ Authority carries responsibility
  • ☐ Frontline teams aren’t absorbing drift
  • ☐ Burden is proportional
  • ☐ “Heroics” aren’t required
  • ☐ No group is routinely overburdened

If the bottom two remain unchecked → extraction patterns are active.

3. COHERENCE

Do actions match purpose?

Diagnostic Question:
Do behaviors align with what the system claims?

Signals:

  • Incentives match values
  • Decisions match direction
  • Communication reflects reality
  • Policies match expectations
  • Contradictions are rare

Checklist:

  • ☐ Incentives reinforce purpose
  • ☐ Communication is honest
  • ☐ Policies match culture
  • ☐ Leadership’s private behavior matches public commitments
  • ☐ Contradictions are exceptional

If ≤2 boxes checked → system is performing, not aligning.

4. ACCOUNTABILITY

Does authority carry the consequences it creates?

Diagnostic Question:
Where does responsibility land when something goes wrong?

Signals:

  • Leaders own failures
  • Issues surface safely
  • Consequences are proportional
  • Structural causes are named
  • Accountability flows upward

Checklist:

  • ☐ Responsibility rests with authority
  • ☐ Leaders own outcomes
  • ☐ Issues surface without retaliation
  • ☐ Failures lead to systemic correction
  • ☐ Harm triggers repair

If responsibility flows downward → Bad Faith is active.

5. RISK

What drift patterns are visible?

Diagnostic Question:
What unresolved tensions signal future harm?

Signals:

  • Repeating failures
  • Cultural erosion
  • Rising volatility
  • Narrative-reality gaps
  • Familiar patterns from past crises

Checklist:

  • ☐ Risks named early
  • ☐ Repeated failures corrected
  • ☐ Culture strengthening
  • ☐ Stakeholders trust direction
  • ☐ No known contradictions ignored

If risk is known but unaddressed → system stands in Drift or Extraction.

SECTION III — Scoring the Audit

The Audit of Will is designed to be simple, observable, and repeatable. Each dimension already includes five checkmarks. Scoring transforms those checkmarks into a clear picture of the system’s state.

✔️ How Scoring Works

For each of the five dimensions (Direction, Burden, Coherence, Accountability, Risk), count how many boxes are checked:

  • 0–1 checks → 0 points
  • 2–3 checks → 1 point
  • 4–5 checks → 2 points

This yields a dimension score between 0 and 2.

📊 Total Audit Score

Add the five dimension scores together:

Total Score: 0 to 10 points

📉 Interpreting the Score

The total score aligns directly with the four systemic states described in the Ledger of Will:

0–2Extraction — Bad Faith + Bad Will
3–5Performance — Bad Faith + Good Will
6–8Drift — Good Faith + Bad Will
9–10Stewardship — Good Faith + Good Will

This rubric keeps the audit intuitive and grounded.
No complex formulas. No weighting.
Just patterns that reveal where the system stands, how it moves, and where alignment can be restored.

SECTION IV— THE AUDIT SUMMARY MAP

After completing the checklist, three final questions reveal the system’s truth:

1. Which quadrant describes the system today?

  • ☐ Good Faith + Good Will (Stewardship)
  • ☐ Good Faith + Bad Will (Drift)
  • ☐ Bad Faith + Good Will (Performance)
  • ☐ Bad Faith + Bad Will (Extraction)

2. What is the system’s trajectory?

  • ☐ Toward alignment
  • ☐ Toward drift
  • ☐ Toward performance
  • ☐ Toward extraction

Trajectory matters more than position.

3. What does the burden map reveal?

  • Who absorbs the system’s weight?
  • Who benefits from the drift?
  • Who carries more than their share?
  • Who is exempt from consequence?

The burden map exposes the system’s ethics in motion.

SECTION V — WHY THE AUDIT MATTERS

The Audit of Will provides:

  • the observable evidence behind the Ledger,
  • the qualitative inputs required for SHL,
  • and the practical visibility leaders need to steward alignment.

It is the bridge between meaning and measurement.

The Audit does not accuse.
It illuminates.

It shows the system:

what it creates,
where its weight falls,
how it drifts,
and where coherence can be restored.

SECTION VI — THE EVIDENCE IS ALREADY HERE

AI didn’t solve accounting. It solved visibility.

A common objection to this audit is:

“We can’t measure this — the data is too hard to track.”

That era is over.

Modern systems produce digital evidence at every touchpoint:

  • calendars and work logs
  • decision trails and exception paths
  • safety warnings and policy violations
  • burnout and turnover patterns
  • operational volatility
  • community complaints
  • communication signals
  • governance drift
  • cultural erosion
  • near misses and emerging risks
  • compliance alerts
  • customer friction
  • structural contradictions

This is the raw material of the Audit of Will.

AI hasn’t made accounting more ethical —
it has made ethical truth harder to hide.

The challenge is no longer data scarcity.
It is organizational willingness.

Systems applaud AI for optimizing accounting —
faster reconciliations, cleaner close cycles, automated controls.

But optimization is not transformation.

Transformation begins when AI’s true capacity is acknowledged:

to surface patterns of drift,
burden displacement,
misalignment,
and Bad Will
that humans learned to overlook.

The evidence exists.
AI lowers the cost of seeing it.
The Audit reveals it.
SHL measures it.

What remains is the courage to act.

CLOSING REFLECTION

The Audit of Will completes the ecosystem:

  • The Ledger gives the language
  • SHL gives the math
  • The Audit gives the visibility

A system tells the truth of itself
not by what it claims,
but by what its choices create —
and by the weight those choices place on others.

The Audit brings that truth into view.
SHL brings that cost onto the balance sheet.
And the Ledger shows the direction a system must take to return to coherence.

Return to The Ledger of Will →

Review the SHL Model →