Should Rovo explain why it didn't choose other answers?

[AGASTYA SHARMA]

Rovo usually provides a single response.

Would it improve trust if it also explained:

• Why alternative documents weren't selected?
• Why certain Jira issues were ignored?
• Why one Confluence page was considered more authoritative?

Could this reduce hallucinations and increase confidence?

[Martin Runge · Accepted solution]

Hi @AGASTYA SHARMA,

Interesting question, but I would be careful about what you are asking for. An explanation of why other documents were not chosen would be generated by the model itself. It would sound convincing, but it can be just as made up as any other output.

What actually helps, from my point of view, is what Rovo already does: showing the sources it used so you can verify the answer yourself. In my experience, the bigger lever is on the content side. If Rovo picks the wrong Confluence page, that is usually a signal of duplicate, outdated, or conflicting content. Curating the knowledge base, archiving stale pages, and maintaining a single source of truth per topic do more for answer quality than any explanation feature.

Cheers, Martin

[Dr Valeri Colon _Connect Centric_]

@AGASTYA SHARMA I agree with Martin. I’d be cautious about asking the model to explain why it rejected every alternative source, because that explanation may itself be generated rather than a faithful record of retrieval. Rovo already exposes used sources, and Agent Debug can show tools/subagents involved. A more useful next step would be stronger retrieval transparency—source freshness, coverage, and why a cited source ranked highly—based on actual retrieval metadata.