A finance operations manager needs a recommendation on restructuring three overlapping vendor contracts, weighing termination clauses, cost, service risk and a pending audit. It goes to the leadership team next week. Which approach is most appropriate?

Answer: D — Use a more capable model such as Opus, and verify the figures and contract terms before it goes to leadership.

Complex, multi-factor reasoning with real consequences justifies a more capable model, and the high stakes also require human verification (d). The cheapest model (a) underserves a hard task. Sending the top model's output without review (b) treats capability as a substitute for verification. Model choice does matter for complex reasoning (c).