Loss reason, next step, close date, lead source — pick your poison.

Every CRM has at least one field everyone pretends is clean because the dashboard depends on it. Reps fill it because it is required. Managers read the chart because it is there. Then the business makes decisions off a value nobody would defend in a one-on-one conversation.

The weird part is that making the field mandatory often makes the report look better before the data gets better.

For teams that actually fixed this: what changed?

Did you remove fields, audit them against calls/emails, change who enters them, or just stop pretending some values belonged in the CRM at all?