{"schema_version":1,"experiment_id":"eoa_inverse_innovation_exp09_archetype_breadth150_20260804","cell_id":"flow_diversion_or_rerouting__accounting_auditing","arm":"BREADTH_PROBE_ONE_SHOT","candidate_id":"flow_diversion_or_rerouting__accounting_auditing__P1","proposal_index":1,"version":0,"title":"Assertion-Preserving Bypass Routing for Blocked Audit Evidence Requests","problem":"During a financial-statement audit, multiple evidence requests may depend on one client process owner or evidence channel. When that path becomes unavailable, overloaded, conflicted, or technically blocked, otherwise valid audit work stalls even though authorized alternate custodians or source systems could supply evidence addressing the same assertion.","actors":["Audit engagement manager","Audit staff issuing and evaluating evidence requests","Client controller or audit coordinator","Primary process owner or evidence custodian","Authorized alternate custodians and system-report owners","Client privacy, security, or legal approvers"],"observable_state":"An evidence-request register shows requests aging beyond a defined threshold, repeated failed access or follow-ups, a concentrated queue at one custodian, or an independence concern on the primary path; the register also identifies alternate sources, their authority, expected evidence attributes, capacity, and current status.","consequence":"Blocked requests can delay completion, compress evaluation time near reporting deadlines, and encourage acceptance of late or poorly matched evidence; routing around controls could instead expose confidential data or produce evidence that does not address the intended assertion.","affected_objective":"Complete sufficient, appropriately controlled evidence acquisition for the specified financial-statement assertion without losing provenance, authorization, population coverage, or reviewer accountability.","intervention":"Create a governed routing junction in the evidence-request register. When a documented path-health trigger fires, the engagement manager may redirect only the blocked request to a prequalified alternate custodian or source-system route. The rerouted request carries an invariant envelope specifying the original assertion, period, population, required fields, provenance requirements, access limits, and destination workpaper. The alternate route is checked for authority, independence, capacity, and shared downstream dependencies before activation; all route decisions and outcomes are logged, monitored, and eligible for rollback or controlled reentry.","structural_mapping":[{"archetype_element":"Identifiable flow","domain_realization":"A discrete audit evidence request and its resulting evidence package."},{"archetype_element":"Problematic current path","domain_realization":"The request's assigned process owner, portal, mailbox, or extraction channel is blocked, overloaded, conflicted, or unavailable."},{"archetype_element":"Path-health signal","domain_realization":"Request age, failed access attempts, custodian queue depth, declared unavailability, or documented independence concern."},{"archetype_element":"Routing boundary","domain_realization":"The evidence-request register entry at which the engagement manager authorizes a path change."},{"archetype_element":"Viable alternate path","domain_realization":"A prequalified alternate custodian or source-system owner able to provide evidence with the required authorization, provenance, scope, and controls."},{"archetype_element":"Destination or function invariant","domain_realization":"The same specified assertion, period, population, and workpaper objective must remain addressed after rerouting."},{"archetype_element":"Feedback and observability","domain_realization":"A route log records trigger, approver, destination, timestamps, completeness checks, exceptions, and any return to the primary path."},{"archetype_element":"Rollback or revision","domain_realization":"The manager can cancel the detour, select another qualified route, or restore the original route when its health and authority are revalidated."}],"mechanism_mapping":[{"mechanism_slug":"path_health_triggered_bypass_routing","role":"Converts a documented impairment signal into selective reassignment of a blocked evidence request while leaving unaffected requests on their existing routes.","counterfactual_removal":"Without the trigger-and-bypass mechanism, the request remains queued behind the impaired path or is redirected ad hoc without a consistent decision boundary."},{"mechanism_slug":"alternate_path_viability_gate","role":"Checks authority, evidence equivalence, capacity, independence, access control, and downstream dependencies before the detour is used.","counterfactual_removal":"Without the gate, diversion could move the request to an incapable or unauthorized source, bypass controls, or merely relocate the bottleneck."},{"mechanism_slug":"invariant_envelope","role":"Carries the original assertion, population, period, provenance, and destination requirements across the route change.","counterfactual_removal":"Without the envelope, the alternate route may deliver accessible material that no longer fulfills the original audit purpose."}],"causal_chain":["A request-specific impairment becomes visible through a defined path-health signal.","The routing junction identifies the blocked request without moving unaffected work.","A viability gate checks candidate alternate routes for authority, independence, capacity, evidence fit, and shared dependencies.","The engagement manager authorizes one alternate route and attaches the invariant envelope.","The request and response travel through the alternate custodian or source-system path to the original workpaper destination.","Audit staff reconcile the received package to the invariant envelope and record any loss, duplication, scope mismatch, or control exception.","Monitoring detects overload, delay, or harm on the alternate path and supports rollback, another reroute, or controlled reentry."],"baseline":"Audit staff continue following up through the originally assigned custodian or escalate the same request up the client's management chain. Any alternate-source outreach is handled case by case through email, without a shared path-health threshold, prequalification record, capacity check, invariant envelope, or explicit reentry rule.","nearest_rivals":["Ordinary escalation, which pushes the request higher through substantially the same organizational path rather than substituting an alternate evidence route.","Load balancing, which distributes requests across custodians routinely rather than diverting a request away from a specifically impaired path.","Failover, which transfers an entire evidence service or workstream to a backup rather than selectively rerouting individual blocked requests.","Buffering or deadline extension, which holds the request until the primary path recovers rather than preserving movement through another path.","Changing the audit procedure, which may pursue different evidence or a different test rather than preserving the original request's destination and requirements across a route change."],"remaining_contrastive_claim":"The candidate's defining move is selective, trigger-based path substitution for an existing evidence request while preserving its assertion and control envelope; it is not merely escalation, routine workload distribution, wholesale backup activation, waiting, or substitution of the audit objective.","authority_safety":{"decision_authority":"The audit engagement manager controls whether the audit route changes; the client data owner or delegated security/privacy authority controls whether an alternate custodian may disclose or access the requested information. Neither approval substitutes for the other.","authorized_first_step":"Conduct a read-only shadow exercise on a closed set of 20 completed evidence requests: apply proposed triggers, identify hypothetical alternate routes, run viability checks from existing records, and compare the simulated packages with the original assertion envelopes. Do not contact new custodians or alter audit conclusions.","excluded_actions":["No automated rerouting of live evidence requests.","No access expansion, credential sharing, or disclosure outside existing authorization.","No bypass of required audit review, client approval, privacy, security, legal, retention, or chain-of-custody controls.","No substitution of a different assertion, period, population, or materiality judgment under the label of rerouting.","No final audit conclusion based on the shadow exercise."],"halt_rollback":"Halt a route when authority is ambiguous, the alternate source cannot preserve provenance or population coverage, the detour shares the impaired downstream dependency, capacity signals deteriorate, confidentiality exposure increases, or evidence is lost or duplicated. Revert the request to pending status under the last authorized route and require manager review before any further path change."},"negative_tests":{"strongest_counterevidence":"Blocked requests are predominantly caused by unclear specifications, missing underlying records, or audit-team review capacity rather than a path-specific custodian or channel impairment; alternate routes either share the same dependency or cannot preserve the required evidence attributes.","problem_falsifier":"For the sampled delayed requests, no independently viable alternate custodian or source-system path exists, or changing paths necessarily changes the assertion, population, provenance, or authorization boundary.","intervention_falsifier":"In the bounded shadow exercise, the routing rule cannot identify blocked cases consistently, or simulated alternate routes more often produce authority gaps, scope mismatches, shared bottlenecks, duplication, or longer unresolved paths than the recorded baseline.","risks":["Diversion to an alternate custodian who lacks authority or relevant context.","Migration of the queue from the primary custodian to an alternate custodian.","Hidden shared dependency, such as both routes relying on the same unavailable system export.","Loss of provenance, population completeness, chain of custody, or reviewer accountability.","Route flapping when request status changes near the trigger threshold.","Duplicate responses or conflicting evidence from simultaneous paths.","Disclosure of confidential information beyond approved access boundaries.","Bypassing independence, legal, security, privacy, or required review controls.","A temporary detour becoming an undocumented default.","Apparent continuity masking that the evidence no longer addresses the original assertion."]},"next_evidence_step":"Using only the 20-request closed shadow sample, record for each request whether a trigger would fire, whether at least one independently authorized alternate path exists, whether the invariant envelope can be preserved, whether downstream dependencies are shared, and whether the simulated route terminates without loss, duplication, or control bypass. Review the results with the engagement manager and client data owner before considering any limited live pilot.","prior_art_status":"UNSEARCHED","diversity_from_prior_proposals":"This is a one-shot breadth-probe candidate generated solely from the supplied archetype and domain card; no other proposals or experiment cells were inspected or compared.","revision_record":{"parent_version":null,"progress_targets_addressed":[],"conceptual_changes":[],"operational_changes":[],"evidence_changes":[],"claim_changes":[]}}