Imagine a client being presented with an evaluation report that recommends their program be discontinued. The client, naturally, wants to know what warrants such a recommendation. The individual may have invested a great deal of money and resources planning, designing, and implementing the program. Or, what if the evaluation report recommends that significant changes be made to the program, changes that involve additional investment? The client needs to be assured the recommended changes are necessary. Hopefully, the evaluation report has few if any recommendations for program changes. But even then, the client is entitled to feel certain that the program will, as currently designed and implemented, continue to meet its business and performance objectives.

Recommendations are sound if they are based on conclusions directly linked to the results of the evaluation. It is the evaluator's responsibility to ensure this linkage is made, and it is the evaluator's job to demonstrate to the client that any recommendations made are sound. It is important that the evaluator take the client step by step through the logic for making recommendations, so that by the time they get to them, it is obvious why they have been made. At this point, the client will be more inclined to consider the recommendations.