The concept of a single version of the truth has gained currency in Information Management to the point of being a mantra and I believe it is appropriate to introduce a few words of caution.

If I can be philosophical for a moment, Information Management theory is starting to turn the many old views of the world, including the way physics describes objects.  This isn’t a long bow to draw for Information Management professionals: Imagine a white statue in the park.  If you put on rose colored glasses, what color is the statue?  If you get everyone in the park to put on rose colored glasses, what color is the statue?  If you cover the statue in rose colored cellophane?  If you paint in statue with rose colored paint?

Survey any group and you are likely to get different answers to the color of the statue under the different circumstances I’ve outlined here.  If you at least said that painting the statue changed its color then you are admitting that it is the information (in this case color) that you receive that is important rather than what might exist in any deeper layers.

Those same rose colored glasses can apply to the enterprise data warehouse.  One version of the truth that forces everyone to see the data through rose colored glasses does not make the data rose colored!  Accountants, however, have thought long and hard about this and have rules for how you can clean-up variances that can’t be reconciled.  The most important thing is to ensure that all observers agree rather than just observe the same result, and that includes reasonable outsiders, executives and analysts.