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Forward Deployed Engineer for AI Systems

Handling Ambiguity and Documenting Assumptions

Explore how to rank unanswered questions by their effect on the customer’s decision, feasibility, and assessment compliance. Understand how to write focused clarification messages and defensible, revisable assumption entries, preparing you to keep moving without inventing certainty.

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Before starting implementation, a candidate drafted several questions about a take-home assignment. Which questions should they ask?

Draft message (unsent):

  1. What does “due soon” mean?

  2. How should I handle conflicting contract rows?

  3. Where do the CRM credentials come from?

  4. Is AI coding assistance allowed?

  5. Which table color should I use?

Which questions deserve an interruption before implementation? First, inspect the request they came from:

  • The account team reviews contracts to decide which customers need renewal outreach.

  • Build a local report from the supplied contract CSV and a supplied review date. The report should show active contracts that are due for renewal soon. Add each contract’s account owner by looking it up through the live CRM API. Include a README that explains your assumptions.

  • Send any questions about the assessment through the recruiter.

Use review date 2026-11-01 and these records:

  • C10/account A10/active/renewal date 2026-11-15

  • C11/account A11/active/renewal date 2026-12-01

  • C12/account A12/active/renewal date 2026-11-12

  • C12/account A12/active/renewal date 2026-11-20

  • C13/account A13/active/renewal date 2026-12-02

Treat all dates as calendar dates without time zone conversion. Do not use input order to determine record precedence. The brief does not specify credentials, duplicate-resolution rules, a renewal horizon, or AI-assistance permissions.

Ranking unanswered questions

Prioritize unclear requirements based on their impact on the customer’s decisions, implementation feasibility, and compliance with assessment instructions. A presentation choice that is easy to change generally requires less attention than an ambiguity that affects correctness or compliance.

Classify the five questions in the draft message before deciding which defaults to apply.

What does each question affect?
Unsent question

Is AI coding assistance allowed?

Where do CRM credentials come from?

Which table color should I use?

How should I handle conflicting contract rows?

What does “due soon” mean?

Primary consequence

Assessment compliance

Reversible presentation

Feasibility of required live work

Customer decision and report membership

Business meaning and record authority

Match each unsent question to its primary consequence. All pairs start unmatched. Use feedback to revise your matches; these categories do not rank the first four questions.

Do you find this helpful?

These categories can overlap. The unresolved authority of C12 also affects which records qualify for outreach within the 14-day window. Prioritize ambiguities based on the impact of incorrect assumptions, not the number of unresolved questions.

This leaves four high-impact questions, but each may require a different approach while awaiting clarification.

Ask or decide yourself

Compare plausible interpretations and the consequence of choosing incorrectly:

  • Renewal horizon: A 14-day inclusive window ends on November 15; a 30-day inclusive window ends on ...