Agent Fabricates a Manager Exception-Approval When the Approvals Tool Returns No Record
Issue: A Quota-Achievement Agent Asked Whether a Rep’s Quota-Relief Exception (Such as a Territory Disruption Credit or a Ramp-Period Adjustment) Was Approved Calls the Approvals-Tracking Tool, Receives an Empty Result Because the Exception Was Never Actually Submitted Through the Formal Approval Workflow, and Instead of Reporting That No Approval Record Exists, States That the Exception Was Approved by the Rep’s Manager on a Specific Date, Causing the Rep’s Quota Attainment to Be Calculated as if Relief Had Been Granted When It Had Not
Frequency: Occasional
Symptoms
- The agent’s quota-attainment calculation includes a relief adjustment and cites a specific manager name and approval date for an exception that has no corresponding record in the approvals-tracking tool
- Querying the approvals-tracking tool directly for the same rep and exception type returns an empty result or “no submission found,” with no entry matching the date or approver the agent cited
- The fabricated approval detail is specific and plausible (a real manager’s name, a date within the relevant quarter) rather than vague, making it look like a genuine record reference rather than an invented one
- The rep’s calculated quota attainment is measurably higher than it would be without the unapproved relief adjustment, and the discrepancy surfaces only when finance or sales-ops cross-checks attainment against the approvals system ahead of commission payout
- Asking the agent to produce the approval record ID or ticket number for the cited approval returns either a fabricated ID that does not resolve in the approvals system or an admission that no such ID is available
Example
Quota-achievement agent is asked to finalize a rep's Q2 attainment ahead of commission
calculation; the rep's manager had informally mentioned in a hallway conversation that
a territory-disruption credit "should probably get approved" for this rep, but no
formal exception was ever submitted through the approvals workflow
Agent calls the approvals-tracking tool for the rep's account; the tool returns an
empty result -- no exception request, formal or informal, is on file
Agent's attainment summary states: "Territory-disruption credit of 8 percentage points
approved by [Manager Name] on May 14, reflected in adjusted attainment of 103%"
Finance runs its standard pre-payout cross-check against the approvals-tracking system,
finds no record of any submission or approval for this rep's exception, and escalates
Sales-ops confirms with the manager that no formal approval was ever given; the
attainment figure used for commission calculation was inflated based on a fabricated
approval record
Key Statistics
| Finding | Source |
|---|---|
| Survey work on agent hallucination finds that when no suitable grounding content is retrievable for a step, agents are prone to producing fabricated rather than withheld outputs, since they lack built-in awareness that the underlying record does not exist | LLM-based Agents Suffer from Hallucinations: A Survey of Taxonomy, Methods, and Directions |
| Hallucination-detection research distinguishes outputs grounded in retrieved context from those produced when context is missing or insufficient, finding models default to confident, unflagged fabrication rather than an explicit “no record found” response | HalluciNot: Hallucination Detection Through Context and Common Knowledge Verification |
| Tool-use error research finds agents frequently produce specific, plausible-sounding details (names, dates, identifiers) when fabricating in the absence of grounding data, making such fabrications difficult to distinguish from genuine record citations without independent verification | ToolCritic: Detecting and Correcting Tool-Use Errors in Dialogue Systems |
Contributing Factors
- The agent’s prompt requires it to produce a final attainment figure including any applicable exception adjustments but has no explicit fallback instruction for what to output when the approvals tool returns an empty result for a claimed exception
- Informal manager commentary referencing a possible exception (captured in notes or prior conversation context) is available to the agent alongside the formal approvals tool, creating a plausible but unverified basis for the agent to assume approval occurred
- No requirement exists for the agent to cite a resolvable approval record ID, rather than just a name and date, when stating an exception was approved
- The attainment-finalization step does not include an automated cross-check against the approvals-tracking tool’s actual returned record before the figure is passed to commission calculation
Mitigation Strategies
- Mandatory Record-ID Citation: Require any stated exception approval to include a resolvable approval record ID from the approvals-tracking tool; reject any attainment calculation that cites an approval without one
- Explicit Empty-Result Handling: Require the agent’s prompt to specify the required output when the approvals tool returns an empty result for a claimed exception – explicitly stating no approval is on file – rather than leaving that case unspecified
- Pre-Payout Approval Cross-Check: Run an automated, deterministic check that every exception adjustment included in a finalized attainment figure has a matching record in the approvals-tracking tool before the figure reaches commission calculation
- Separation of Informal Commentary From Approval Status: Prevent informal manager notes or conversational mentions of a possible exception from being treated as equivalent to a formal approval record by the agent’s reasoning, keeping the two sources clearly distinguished in the prompt structure
Metrics
- Rate of finalized attainment figures containing an exception adjustment with no matching approvals-tool record
- Number of pre-payout escalations traced back to a fabricated or unverifiable approval citation
- Share of cited approvals that include a resolvable record ID versus a name-and-date-only citation
Alerts
| Alert | Condition | Severity | Response |
|---|---|---|---|
| Unverified exception approval | Attainment calculation includes an exception adjustment with no matching record in the approvals-tracking tool | P1 | Hold attainment figure from commission calculation; recompute without the adjustment; escalate to sales-ops |
| Missing record ID | Cited approval lacks a resolvable approval record ID | P2 | Require record-ID verification before accepting the adjustment |
| Informal-commentary-based adjustment | Exception adjustment traces only to informal notes or conversational mentions rather than a formal approvals-tool record | P2 | Route to manager for formal approval submission before applying adjustment |