Deciding
The table and its gaps
Two options to choose between: a supplier, a method, a tool.
How it goes
do it yourself- Ask for a comparison table of the two options, criterion by criterion.
- Then ask what the table is missing: which criteria were left out, and what their absence favours.
- Finally, ask cell by cell which ones rest on a source and which on a generality.
What you get out of it
The third answer is worth more than the first two together. A well-formed table is not a verified table: formatting is the easiest thing a model produces, and that is exactly what makes a table convincing before it is right.
Going further
Ask which missing criterion would have reversed the ranking. If one exists, your comparison was not about what you thought it was.