Identity Audit

The purpose is to test whether identity use answers to the concrete person, the relevant role, the documented action, and the bounded matter. The audit may be applied to self-description, external categorisation, institutional registration, group identity, professional role, political or cultural belonging, and other identity frames.

The audit concerns relations and uses, not identities as essentially good or bad. It must not decide what a person 'really is' beyond what can be documented in the matter, and it must not build capture into the mandate.

Identity Audit becomes imprecise when person, self, identity, role, category, and action are used interchangeably. The distinctions below are analytical aids and must not be turned into claims about hidden metaphysical parts of the person.

A person may hold several identities and roles, change self-description, face conflicting attributions, or display distance between category and action. The audit should make these relations visible rather than forcing them into one total explanation.

The mandate must identify the concrete identity relation to be tested. It is not sufficient to state that the task is to 'audit identity' or 'expose identity capture.'

A defensible mandate makes visible who uses the identity, to whom it is applied, the situation in which it operates, which decisions or actions it affects, and the time period concerned.

The questions are used to open inquiry, not as a checklist in which each affirmative answer counts as capture. Answers must be tied to concrete sources, actions, and consequences.

Identity Audit may carry serious personal and social consequences. It therefore requires strict distinction among direct documentation, pattern interpretation, third-party claims, and the auditor's own assumptions.

Self-description is relevant evidence of how a person understands themselves, but it is not automatically complete documentation of cause, consequence, or every aspect of the person. External classification is relevant evidence of how others treat the person, but it is not automatically a true account of the person.

• Record identity expressions verbatim or in precise summary with source, date, and context.
• Distinguish self-description from external attribution and administrative registration.
• Document concrete actions, decisions, and consequences connected to the identity.
• Register relevant counter-examples, change over time, and situations in which identity does not explain the action.
• Give the audited party an opportunity to correct factual errors and provide alternative explanations.
• Mark what cannot be documented and keep uncertainty open.

Identity capture is not another name for strong identity, group belonging, pride, role consciousness, or disagreement. The risk pattern becomes relevant where the identity frame begins to gain governing priority over the person, the concrete action, or relevant correction.

An F6 finding may be recorded where several concrete indicators point in this direction but decisive conditions for F7 remain undocumented. F7 requires documentation of the full relation among the identity frame, what it replaces, its governing operation, resistance to correction, and consequence.

Identity Audit uses the common finding categories F1–F7. The finding must state which identity use was assessed, within which scope, on what grounds, and with what uncertainty.

Findings concerning identity use must not be formulated as total judgments of the person. There is a difference between documenting that a particular identity frame governs a decision and asserting that the human being 'is captured' in every context.

Correction must answer to the bounded finding. Its purpose is not to erase identity, compel a particular self-description, or make neutrality an absolute demand.

A defensible correction restores the distinction among person, identity, role, action, and documentation, and permits identity use to be tested without placing human worth or participation at stake.

• Clarify what the identity refers to and what it does not document.
• Separate individual action and responsibility from prior assumptions about the group or role.
• Make self-description, external attribution, and administrative category visible as different sources.
• Bound identity to the purpose for which it is actually relevant.
• Open the decision process to relevant counter-material and individual documentation.
• Remove sanctions against relevant clarification, doubt, or change where they are not necessary and proportionate.
• Define who is responsible for change, how the effect will be tested, and how harm or new forms of capture will be detected.

Identity Audit may itself become capturing where the auditor's categories are made incorrigible, where the person is permitted to speak only through the auditor's language, or where disagreement is treated as a symptom of capture.

The method cannot determine inner self-understanding with certainty and cannot replace professional assessment where medical, psychological, legal, or other questions require particular competence and regulation.

An Identity Audit must be documented in the common audit record or an equivalent traceable format. The record should show mandate, identity expressions, sources, counter-material, questions, provisional and final findings, contradiction, correction, and planned review.

Review must examine whether correction actually improved precision, responsibility, and access to relevant counter-material, and whether it reduced harm without creating a new identity frame with the same capturing function.