Innovation Advisory · Framework 06
5 questions · CLEARThe Causal Pathway Review
Five questions to apply when reviewing a Theory of Change or pathway diagram. A reviewer's checklist for the moment when the boxes-and-arrows are already on the wall and somebody has to ask whether the logic actually holds.
Does the pathway clearly show how one step leads to the next? Where does the logic jump?
Read the if-then between every step. If you can imagine a plausible reader saying 'and then a miracle happens here', you have found the jump. Name it. Either fill it with an intermediate step or admit the leap is an assumption and move it to the assumptions row.
Are activities, outputs, intermediate outcomes, and outcomes placed at the right level?
The most common error is dressing an output up as an outcome. Trainings delivered is an output. Practice changed is an outcome. If a row could be ticked off by the implementer alone, it is probably not an outcome — it is the work that produces one.
Have key stakeholders and systems been considered while designing the pathway?
A pathway that depends on a frontline worker, a panchayat, a school principal, or a district officer should name them somewhere. If the actors and structures the pathway runs through are invisible on the diagram, the pathway is borrowing their effort without crediting it — and without planning for what happens when they push back.
What assumptions need to be made explicit? Where could the assumptions break down?
Every arrow is an assumption in disguise. Pull the strongest three out of the diagram and write them as full sentences. Then ask: under what conditions does this stop being true? If the answer is "it cannot stop being true", you have not yet found the assumption — keep looking.
What is repeated in another pathway? Should it be merged, moved or removed?
Organisations running multiple parallel pathways tend to double-count the same outcome from different angles. If two pathways credit themselves with the same change, decide who owns it, or merge the two. A clean pathway is honest about what it alone is producing.
What the five questions are doing
Mapped to standard causal-pathway review practice, the five letters are doing five different jobs. Causal logic checks the plausibility of the if-then links between steps. Level clarity catches the common error of conflating outputs with outcomes, or activities with outputs. Essential missing links is a stakeholder and systems-boundary check — whether the pathway has accounted for the actors and structures it depends on. Assumptions and risks is the assumption-surfacing and rival-explanations step. Repetition / overlap is housekeeping for organisations running multiple parallel pathways that feed the same outcome.
Use it as a reviewer's pass before signing off a logframe, a Theory of Change, or a results chain — whether the work is yours or somebody else's.