The last few months of the year resulted in a lot of family visits and conversations. I am grateful so many of my relatives still get together. While I was back in North Carolina for the holidays, stories came up that I had never heard before — different versions of events I thought I knew.

It reminded me how important it is to seek truth rather than assume you have the full picture. In business, we do this with our numbers all the time — we assume we know the story the data is telling without looking closely enough. Dig deeper. Ask the next question. The truth in your financials, like the truth in family stories, is often more nuanced and more useful than the version on the surface.