For a typical commercial bank loan the lending officer is taught to evaluate at least five elements of the potential borrowers credit situation. Of these four of them are quantitative, such as income, loan amount, collateral etc. The fifth is the character of the borrower, coupled with the quality of the information that he/she provides to the lender. This question is not addressed specifically by many loan officers. Please write a memo to the CEO making the case why this should be the first and arguably the most important question that is asked, and present a plan to train all of your loan officers on getting this information.