In this season-finale episode of Due Diligence Download, Sylwia and Amritha tackle one of the most underrated skills in investigations and compliance: how to write a clear, defensible, and genuinely useful due diligence and investigations report.

Drawing on decades of reviewing (and rewriting!) thousands of EDD and intelligence reports, they break down what makes reporting actually effective — from understanding your audience and filtering irrelevant noise, to structuring findings in a way that enables fast, confident decision-making.

They also compare analytical writing with narrative-driven HUMINT reporting, unpack why proportionality matters more than page count, and discuss practical techniques like BLUF, the Pyramid principle, and the classic 5W+H framework. The episode also explores how AI can support (and sometimes undermine) good reporting, and why QA/QC remains the backbone of reliable investigations.

If you’ve ever asked yourself, “What does a good EDD report really look like?” — this one’s for you.

Resources & Links

https://medium.com/lessons-from-mckinsey/the-pyramid-principle-f0885dd3c5c7
https://www.cmu.edu/student-success/other-resources/handouts/comm-supp-pdfs/bluf-topic-sentence.pdf
https://airfocus.com/glossary/what-is-the-5ws-1h-framework/
https://asq.org/quality-resources/quality-assurance-vs-control
https://oecd.ai/en/ai-principles

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