The AI procurement questions to ask before you sign

Separate capability claims from accountability

Vendors compete on capability, but your risk lives in accountability. Push past the demo to how you would audit, constrain, and verify the system in production, because that is what you will actually rely on.

A confident demo and an auditable system are not the same purchase.

Insist on honest scope

Ask what the system does not do, and what its numbers do and do not prove. A vendor who states the boundaries clearly is usually more trustworthy than one who claims everything works.

Write verifiability into the contract

If decisions matter, require that they leave a record you can check independently, and make that a contractual deliverable rather than a feature you hope ships.

Reading the answers, not just asking

The questions matter less than how a vendor answers them. Clear, specific answers, including candid statements of limits, are a strong signal. Deflection, jargon, or a pivot back to capability whenever accountability comes up is a signal of a different kind.

Bring risk and procurement into the room, not just technologists. The questions that protect you (ownership, verifiability, continuity, honest scope) are exactly the ones those teams already know how to press.