Free template

Find out what AI your people already use

An anonymous survey and an amnesty message. Together they bring personal AI accounts into the open, and tell you which tasks are worth automating.

Download the Word templateThe questions
Demand, not indiscipline

Shadow AI is your best evidence of demand

Shadow AI is the use of AI tools the business has not sanctioned, usually personal accounts. It is a security risk, and it is first a finding.

The people using it are telling you which tasks are worth automating, which tools they find usable, and where your systems are failing them. Their list is usually longer than the board's, and better prioritised, because it has been tested on real work.

Three moves

Absorb it, ask about it, say what is wanted

  • Absorb it

    Provide a sanctioned tool on business terms that does what the personal one did. Make the safe route the easy route.

  • Ask about it

    Run a short anonymous survey before the sanctioned tools arrive. It is the cheapest discovery exercise there is.

  • Say what is wanted

    Say, in the policy and out loud, that experimenting inside the sanctioned tools is welcome.

The survey

Eight questions, anonymous

  1. Which AI tools have you used for work in the last month? (List of common tools, plus "other".)
  2. On which account: a personal free account, a personal paid account, or a work account?
  3. What do you use it for? Pick up to three tasks.
  4. Roughly how much time does it save you in a typical week?
  5. What kinds of information have you put into it? (Public, internal, client, personal data about others.)
  6. What stopped you using a work tool for this?
  7. Which task would you most like AI to help with, that it does not today?
  8. Anything you have built or found that colleagues should know about?

Promise anonymity, and keep it. Report the results by team, never by person.

The amnesty

End the ban and open the tool in one message

If AI tools are blocked today, announce the end of the ban and the arrival of the sanctioned tool together. The template covers four things:

  • Why the ban was introduced. The concern about company data was legitimate.
  • Why it is being replaced. A ban moved use to personal accounts, where nobody could see or protect it.
  • What people can now do. The approved tool, how to sign in, and the one-page policy.
  • The amnesty. Nobody is penalised for past use of personal accounts if they move to the business workspace.

An amnesty is the fastest way to an honest AI inventory.

Questions

Using the template

Should directors take the survey too?

Yes. Directors are often heavy users of personal accounts, and they handle the most sensitive material. A policy the board exempts itself from will not survive its first all-staff meeting.

What if someone has built something clever on a personal account?

Thank them, move it onto the business workspace, and ask them to show colleagues. Telling them to stop teaches everyone else to hide their ideas.

Turn shadow AI into a roadmap

CONVERGE chapter 20 and GOVERN chapter 1 cover shadow AI in full. Or we can run the survey and turn the answers into your first use cases.

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