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ACCA Applied Skills · Performance Management · Uses and control of information

Wend Co's finance director receives a monthly report containing forty pages of detailed ledger listings, from which she must find the few items affecting a pricing decision. Which qualitative characteristic of good information is most clearly lacking?

Understandability and relevance are lacking. Forty pages of ledger detail bury the few items needed for the pricing decision, causing information overload. The scenario gives no indication of errors, lateness or an unreliable source.

  1. AAccuracy, because the ledgers are likely to contain errors
  2. BTimeliness, because the report is only monthly
  3. CUnderstandability and relevance, because the volume of detail hides the items that matter for the decisionCorrect
  4. DAuthority, because ledgers are not an official source

Explanation

The problem is information overload: the report is not communicated in a clear form focused on the decision, so useful items are buried among irrelevant ones. Nothing in the scenario suggests errors, lateness or an unreliable source, so the other characteristics are not the main issue.

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