When the honest answer is that nobody knows

More often than the sector admits.

A number of recurring questions have no settled answer: the standards are silent, guidance is general, and practice varies between assessors and over time. The sector fills that space with confident assertions.

Recognising an unsettled question is useful, because the response differs. Where a requirement is clear, comply. Where it is genuinely uncertain, document the reasoning for the position taken, which is what makes a defensible position defensible.

A documented, reasonable interpretation applied consistently is a much stronger position under assessment than an undocumented one that happens to match the assessor's view.

It is also worth keeping the evidence of the uncertainty: the guidance that was ambiguous, the advice sought, the date. That establishes good faith in a way that a bare decision does not.

Where the consequences of being wrong are material, this is the point to obtain qualified advice rather than to rely on any general source, including this one.

The other reason to document an interpretation is continuity. The person who reasoned it through will leave, and the next person will encounter a practice with no visible justification and will either defend it without understanding it or change it without knowing why it was there.