You Have AI Tools. But Does Your Team Audit the Data Behind Them?

A boss asks for a four-week analysis, and the employee sends it back in 15 minutes. That’s a warning sign! An analysis was requested with a suspense date a couple of weeks out. The deadline was aggressive (necessary, but aggressive nonetheless). Most people would have pushed back on that timeline. But this went the opposite direction. The ‘analysis’ was completed in just 15 minutes. Something was clearly off. The document was full of pages that looked thorough but didn’t hold up under scrutiny. AI was the obvious answer.

Yes, this is a real story! With the rapid adoption of AI, more and more people are reaching for it to complete their workload. But like an industrial machine, the quality of the output depends entirely on the quality of the input. Skip the quality gate, and you are just manufacturing defects at scale.

But that’s not an AI problem. That’s a data literacy problem and it now rests with the leader to solve.

The Skills Gap Isn’t a Training Problem

According to the 2026 State of Data & AI Literacy Report, 59% of enterprise leaders say their organization has an AI skills gap, although most are already investing in AI training. Why? Because most training teaches how to prompt, not how to question the results. That’s the gap. Unequivocally, AI is worth the hype. But if your team’s deliverables lack any human judgment in the equation, you are manufacturing conclusions without substance, at speed.

What Leaders Can Do Differently

Training your team to use AI tools isn’t enough. You need to train them to own what AI produces. Here are some techniques:

• Require the work behind the work. When you assign a high-stakes deliverable, ask for a brief on the sources, assumptions, and limitations behind it, not just the conclusion. This forces employees to engage critically with AI output rather than pass it forward.
• Make “what did you add?” a standard question. In reviews, normalize asking what the employee contributed beyond what an AI tool would generate on its own. For example, a client’s known preferences, a lesson from a past project, an internal political consideration that changes the recommendation. If they can’t answer, the work isn’t done.
• Build brain-first habits at the team level. Encourage employees to write their own thinking, even just three rough bullet points, before opening an AI tool on any significant task. The point is to focus the work in human judgment first, and use AI to expand or refine the analysis. The employee stays the driver.

AI data literacy isn’t a soft skill anymore. It’s the quality gate that determines whether your organization’s AI investment produces insight or just output. Leaders who build that gate into their culture, through expectations, habits, and the right questions, are the ones who will realize the return on AI that everyone else is still waiting for.

The machine will always respond faster than your team. Make sure it doesn’t replace their judgment at the same speed.

Adeline (Addy) Maissonet is a senior advisor on contracting policies and procedures within the Office of the Secretary of War, U.S. Department of War (DoW) and the agency’s representative on the Department’s views on proposed legislation to Congressional members, their staff, and committee staffers. She leads the development and implementation of Department-wide procurement policies for commodities and services, within her portfolio. Prior to her current role, Addy served as a Division Chief and Contracting Officer with unlimited warrant authority for the U.S. Army Mission and Installation Contracting Command (MICC) – Fort Eustis, Virginia. Prior to joining the MICC, Addy served as a Branch Head for the Mid-Atlantic Regional Maintenance Center (MARMC), Norfolk, Virginia, with unlimited warrant authority. She also held other procurement positions with the U.S. Navy. Addy holds an MBA in Management and Contracting Level III Certification under the Defense Acquisition Workforce Improvement Act. She is a graduate from Cornell University’s Executive Leadership Certificate Program and Harvard University’s Business Analytics Certificate Program. In her free time, Addy enjoys hiking and overlanding with her family and friends.

Note: The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the Department of War.

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