Evaluation of knowledge quality of lessons learned by asking questions

Lessons learned, which are a special kind of knowledge obtained by people from experience, can help enterprises avoid reinvention and standardize their best practices. Professionals' performance in various sectors can also be improved.Lesson learning is the process of converting people's experience of events into knowledge for application in the future.While the process and IT systems of lesson learning have been widely studied, there is little research on the quality ofthe knowledge content of lessons learned. This paper discusses the concept of knowledge quality and relationships among the context, experience, reflection asking and content of lessons learned. Focusing on captured lessons, we propose the method of asking relevant questions to evaluate lessons learned. The questions are based on qualitative content analysisfrom various facets, namely context, content and experience. We have provided a checklist which consists of more than a dozen of questions as our first findings. We illustrate the method by describing and analyzing an authentic case of lessons learned produced by a public organization, namely the medication incidents bulletins published by the Hong Kong Hospital Authority. More case studies can be conducted for other industries. We conclude this study with suggestions on possible improvements to the quality of content of lessons learned. This paper provides a foundation for future research by developing a framework for analyzing lessons learned. It also facilitates deeper understanding of the evaluation of knowledge quality.