Auditability
The property that a past decision can be reconstructed exactly — same inputs, same model state, same evidence, same output — rather than merely narrated from a log.
Why it matters
Applies to compliance, internal audit and, on request, the examiner. It bites retrospectively and without warning, typically years later and typically about the one decision nobody expected to have to explain. It fails when any component of the decision was not captured: model version, memory state, retrieval corpus as it stood, prompt version, parameters. A trace that records the call chain but not the model state produces a narrative about a decision, not the decision. This is the best-covered MARQUE question in existing control frameworks — 131 of 230 objectives touch it — and still the most commonly failed in practice.
What it is not
These are routinely confused with Auditability. The distinctions are not pedantic — each one has consequences for how a system is governed.
Logging records that something happened. Auditability requires that everything needed to re-derive it was captured.
Explainability is why the model produced an output. Auditability is proof of what the output was and what produced it. A system can be fully auditable and entirely inscrutable.
Relationships
Typed edges into the rest of the ontology. These are what make the canon traversable rather than merely readable.
| Verb | Target | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
addresses | Auditability | The subject speaks to the object as a question or concern. |
relatedTo | Audit Trail | An association too weak or too general for a stronger verb. |
relatedTo | Agent Decision Record | An association too weak or too general for a stronger verb. |
Record
| Canonical identifier | QIS-TERM-00028 |
| Status | Canonical industry term |
| Adoption | Widely used |
| Domain · Layer | MARQUE questions · Governance |
| Origin | MARQUE question 04. The recordkeeping tradition is decades old in financial services; its extension to model state is not. |
| Semantic aliases | None recorded. |
| First published | 2026-08-02 |
| Last reviewed | 2026-08-02 · 180-day cycle |
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