What is due diligence? A professional and personal standard

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Before making any big purchase, long-term commitment, or investment, you want to know everything you can about what you’re getting into.

Weigh the benefits against the risks. You’ll want to know in detail the strengths and weaknesses of whatever it is you’re purchasing. In a worst-case scenario, you’ll want to know if there’s an easy way to rid yourself of the product or service, especially if it doesn’t live up to its claims or hype.

In short, you’ll want to have exercised this thing called due diligence before making any purchase, commitment, or investment.

Due diligence means doing the necessary research to know what you’re purchasing and thoroughly understand the associated benefits and risks. In other words, due diligence is all about methodically checking everything out and developing contingency plans should the purchase prove to bring more harm than good.

Each time you spend your hard-earned cash or precious time on something—whether it’s a one-time purchase or a continuing subscription—you probably want to be really sure about what you’re getting yourself into. It could be something small, like a fee for a new app you’re trying out, or it could be something much bigger, like buying a car, choosing a college, or starting a new business venture.

Whatever the case may be, you definitely don’t want unpleasant surprises. This means you’ll want to scrutinize all the good and bad points from every conceivable angle before making a decision. That’s due diligence.

When it comes to making bigger purchases and agreements, like buying a new home, a commercial space, or acquiring a company, you’re looking at a much more extensive volume of financial and legal forms. You may need to engage various agents to facilitate the process (e.g., attorneys, accountants, and transfer agents), and there will likely be an extended period for due diligence implementation.

Because most of us are more likely to buy a home than a business, let’s focus on the extended due diligence period specific to a home purchase.

There will come a time (probably when you buy your first home) when you’ll come across the terms “due diligence money” and “earnest money.”

Both terms refer to funds that a buyer hands over to a seller in a show of “good faith,” meaning the buyer is serious about making a purchase. Sometimes, both types of good-faith deposit can be used synonymously, while at other times—often depending on the state you live in—the terms have to be differentiated.

When you buy a home, there’s often a due diligence period that typically lasts anywhere from 14 to 30 days. This is the time when you conduct the final inspections, review disclosures, and do all the final checks before finalizing the deal.

During this period, the buyer pays due diligence money—a non-refundable fee equivalent to a certain percentage of the purchase—to the seller (in most cases).

Therein lies the difference between due diligence money and earnest money, which is typically held in escrow and refundable to the buyer (within certain restrictions) if a sale does not materialize.

Making a due diligence checklist is a matter of extremes. For example, when a venture capital firm or private equity group seeks to acquire or make a strategic investment in a company, the due diligence checklist will be quite exhaustive—pages and pages of numbers, trends, and processes to research. Such a list might require full disclosure of the company’s financial and tax information, products and services, litigations, insurance coverage, intellectual property (patents, technology assets, etc.), regulatory issues, and plenty more.

But due diligence can play an important role in almost any decision—big, small, short term, long term—that involves weighing risks versus rewards. For example:

Due diligence is about setting baseline expectations, but it also entails contingencies—plans B and C in case things don’t turn out quite the way you hoped.

Due diligence can help save you from trouble when making high-stakes transactions like home purchases or business acquisitions. It’s equally important in everyday life, whether you’re picking out an app, determining the best use of your money, or even deciding where to dine next Saturday. Due diligence is about being informed, prepared, and forward-looking in all your decisions. It’s the art and science of mitigating risk.

Because due diligence can be applied across multiple domains—each with its unique level of complexity—putting together a due diligence checklist that’s appropriate for the kind of transaction you’re making can be especially helpful. As the saying goes, “An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.” The more we work due diligence into our lives, the more adept we become at safeguarding our resources and directing them toward the right goals.