Wonnacott’s Discrepancy Matrix

Wonnacott’s Discrepancy Matrix encourages practitioners to reflect on what is known about a case and what is unknown or not yet known – a vital aspect of working with uncertainty. It supports the practitioner to tease out the information they hold into four types: evidence, ambiguous, assumption, and missing.

Taken from the Professional Curosity online learning package, Fareena Shaheed explains how the tool can be used for group reflection.

Talking Points

This video looks at:

• How the tool can help us to critically review the information and the evidence that we are using.
• How the tool can be applied in practice.
• How we can effectively use the tool to come up with a plan to take our work forward and to develop curious practice.

Related resources

• Professional curiosity in safeguarding adults: Strategic Briefing (2020)
• Analysis and critical thinking in assessment: Resource Pack (2014)

Using the tool in practice

 Wonnacott’s Discrepancy Matrix  can help you to apply the tool. Think about:

1. What do I know? For something to go into the ‘evidence’ category, it needs to be proven and verified.
2. What is ambiguous? This relates to information that is not properly understood, is only hearsay or has more than one meaning dependant on context, or is hinted at by others but not clarified or owned.
3. What do I think I know? Explore your own practice wisdom and also your prejudices to see how this is informing the case. Emotion and values can also be explored.
4. What is missing? Ask colleagues to listen to the story (supervisors, peers, other agency staff) and to prompt you on where there are gaps in the information.