Most ESG claims die in the gap between a polished sustainability paragraph and the general ledger. Assurance teams inherit the paragraph first, then scramble for evidence. Reverse the order.
Start with the assertion, not the story
Write the claim as an assertion an auditor can test: quantity, unit, period, and entity boundary. “We reduced energy intensity” is a slogan. “Site A electricity kWh per NT$1m revenue declined 6.2% year over year within the Taiwan(China) manufacturing subgroup” is an assertion.
Find the financial twin
Every quantitative ESG claim should name a financial twin — a revenue denominator, a cost center, a fixed-asset register, or a payroll extract. Inside a financial auditing app for ESG-related financial assurance, store that twin beside the KPI so reviewers never hunt across tools.
Walk the trail aloud
In Connecteddatahub studios we ask participants to narrate the trail in under two minutes. If the narration requires tribal knowledge, the workpaper is incomplete. The fix is usually a screenshot of the source query plus a reconciling tab — not another slide.