KPI Reporting … When KPIs Look Right but Can’t Be Proved
A knife in the hand of a murderer leads to death, … but a knife in the hand of a surgeon leads to life.
Designed and Developed by Paul M. Critchlow © 2026,
“When Spreadsheets Lie – that false confidence in spreadsheets.”, released 10 Feb 2026.
Key Performance Indicators are meant to create clarity.
In practice, many KPI spreadsheets do the opposite.
A common issue I see is KPIs driven by:
hard-coded targets inside formulas
conditional formatting used as logic
copied KPI results pasted back as “values”
The report still looks professional.
The colours still change.
But the logic chain is broken.
Once a KPI result is manually overridden or visually interpreted instead of calculated from raw data, the metric can no longer be independently verified. Over time, management discussions shift from “is this correct?” to “this is what we’ve always used.”
That’s when KPIs stop measuring performance and start reinforcing assumptions.
Question to consider:
If you had to explain exactly how one KPI is calculated — cell by cell — could you still do it?
Take the survey: https://tinyurl.com/pmcsheetsurvey
You can contact me directly at trainer@pmcza.com
#WhenSpreadsheetsLie #SpreadsheetRisk #DataIntegrity #ExcelSystems #DecisionMaking #ManagementReporting
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