.......Instead of providing recommendations of who to promote to replace all the people he's firing, his staff mostly want to provide the recommendation of "don't do that." A few people are providing actual recommendations but it's unclear to what extent their recommendations actually have anything to do with what he cares about, beyond basic criteria like 'capable of arithmetic.'

Do they want to elaborate on exactly why he should keep handing money to people who cannot say that they haven't stolen any money in the past week and don't plan to for, not even forever, the next month.

These people think that the replacements aren't actually going to skim less no matter how he picks them, all he'd be doing is replacing experienced staff with less experienced staff. 

This person thinks the replacements would probably skim more because they have less experience with how to make the budget come out right without skimming.

This person thinks "stealing" is a really unhelpful way to think about it, it's more like... using their experience to navigate complicated judgment calls surrounding the budget. 

This person thinks he's basically just going to divide the group into "able to make their save" and "not able to make their save," although now that she thinks about it there are some benefits to filtering out the weak-willed, it just doesn't seem totally worth the tradeoff.

That's why he's also interested in concentrating budgetary power in fewer hands.

As Blai said, if anyone has some thing that isn't actual corruption and theft, but might be caught by underinformed wordings, they should talk to him about it ahead of time!

He is aware some people will make their save, the point is that they have to make the assertion before they know if they will or not - none of these people are going to be guaranteed to make their save, let alone to do it next month too.

Well, it depends on what exactly he's having them say, but if he wants people to say they're certain they won't do any skimming next month, anyone who can pass probably made their save. They were assuming he's keeping the exact wording a surprise, but if he's taking suggestions, maybe he could have them say that they don't specifically have plans to definitely do any skimming-and-such?

He is planning to go from the other direction, actually, that they are affirmatively planning to disburse the money according to their fiduciary duties.

...How much certainty is he going to want them to be able to express? Something might come up, see, like being eaten by a demon, or like needing to pay for some emergency equipment replacement.

You can intend to do this without affirming that demons will be unable to eat you. Who among these people is handling money and does not have emergency equipment replacement affordances, that sounds like a problem.

Well, see, there's only so much money to go around (more than usual this month, so maybe it won't be a problem, but they can't be sure of that), so if they need to spend more on emergency equipment replacement than allocated for that purpose it has to come from somewhere else.

Then they should talk to someone who licitly has the discretionary funds to cover that or get a signoff about reallocating something, not just... do stuff. This is not interior decorating.

Sometimes there just isn't enough money in the budget to pay for all the things the army is theoretically supposed to be spending money on, and they have to make decisions about what to prioritize! Maybe that doesn't happen in Axis? ...Probably some of them will at least be able to intend to get their commanding officer's permission, if that's all he's asking?

That is all he is asking for now unless he detects suspicious patterns in how that turns up in the DOCUMENTATION they will be doing.

They do not have specific further complains about the wording beyond variously-phrased attempts to get him to give up on this plan entirely, or at least significantly curtail it.

Nope. He will busy himself with arranging that in anticipation of some demotions more purchases can be batched so it will not be unmanageable for any honest men who turn out to exist.

Great!

Is he planning on putting them all through the Zone today? If so, what specific wording does he want them to attest to?

He is going to give them a little more time to come forward with anything weird they would like to suss out the rules for and he's going to workshop the wording with Rathimus and Irabeth.

When the Knight-Commander suggested that he purchase cold irons arrows from the Chelish forces, that counts as getting his commanding officer's approval, right?

...possibly they should look over what it's competing with now that they've got more information about the next month's funding but either way yes, that counts as getting CO approval.

Great! Irabeth and Rathimus can help him hammer out an appropriate wording, and—

—some of his guards would like to inform him that they caught someone attempting to steal some of the Crusade's funds and desert! (One of his advisors suggests that maybe they could just make an example out of that guy and skip the Zones for everyone else?)

Sigh. Well done catching the guy, let's schedule him a trial. They are going to do the Zones for everyone who handles money.

It hasn't been that long since the Crusade started, so most people haven't had that much opportunity to spend money in unapproved ways! These guys are capable of affirming the provided statement under a Zone of Truth! Hooray!

...Two of those guys appear to be under an Abjuration that, after a little bit of examination, Nenio identifies as a Protection from Law spell.

These other guys are going to try to sneak similar-but-not-identical wordings past him.

These guys can affirm the part about not having done any theft but can't manage to affirm the part about intending to conduct themselves according to the Knight-Commander's standards for the next month. (Some of them can make weaker claims, like that they'll make an effort but aren't sure they'll succeed, but not all of them.)

A few people have used funds in ways contrary to what they were supposed to be using them for without permission, with reasonableness levels ranging from "spent some equipment-replacement funds they didn't end up needing to pay for a Restoration" to "straight-up theft for personal gain."

These guys are refusing to go through the Zone at all on the grounds that it's "disrespectful."

This guy, upon failing his save, draws a dagger and attempts to start stabbing the guy closest to him.

Hooray!

Where did they even get a Protection from Law. They have failed the Zone.

No, that's why you do the wording-sensitive part before the Zone's even up so that you can correct these errors without being pressed for time.

Is there some kind of support or supervision that would let them do their jobs properly, he'd like to arrange that between the first and second Zones for anyone who is almost but not quite there.

Same question for the Restoration-level offenses but straight up theft for personal gain is Not Fucking Allowed.

You are allowed to fail the Zone that way instead of by actually walking into it, sure.

Qualm.

Most of the guys who are almost there (or who have done Restoration-level offenses) think they could probably manage to follow his rules if they could be sure of having enough budget and not having that budget eaten up by unexpected emergencies. Some of them are really pretty confident there will be unexpected emergencies, though, they're literally on the Abyssal side of the Wardstone barrier. Some of them think they could definitely manage to follow the rules if they were sure the Knight-Commander was definitely going to approve whatever budget shenanigans they try to pull but don't trust him to be reasonable about that. This guy has a standing disagreement with his commanding officer about the extent to which it's useful to have healing items in reserve as opposed to just having clerics handle everything, but thinks he could follow the rules if he were working under someone else. This guy has been skimming off the top to pay himself backpay from a few months ago, and he hasn't specifically done it since the Crusade started but he couldn't manage to convince himself he definitely wasn't going to keep doing it. This guy has been skimming off the top to fund his gambling habit; he also hasn't skimmed since the Crusade started, and he's been trying very hard to quit so he can follow the new rules about gambling but it didn't work the last five times so probably it won't work this time. These guys think that the Knight-Commander is setting them a task that'll sooner or later be impossible and in light of that don't think they can affirm their intent to succeed at it over any particular length of time.

Dagger guy stops with the stabbing! 

Dagger guy is super under arrest.

Blai will swap Standing Disagreement Guy! Maybe he should just make an army-wide announcement that he likes solving problems that can be solved by shuffling people around by shuffling people around! Everybody else should stop handling money although he will be relatively gentle about this with Backpay Skimmer, that at least makes any sense as something someone could talk themselves into as a thing it might be okay to do. Impossible Task Guys, this is the budget for This Month, he is asking for an affirmation of intentions over the course of This Month, he realizes it is going to get really crunchy around here if the next month's money does not add up but they have approximately enough Literally This Month That They Are Experiencing, can we get a solid try for just that period of time and revisit In One Month.

Impossible Task Guys are willing to affirm their intent to try if they don't have to say anything about whether they think they'll succeed, is that good enough?

When Dagger Guy shakes off the Qualm, he (now outside the Zone of Truth) will attempt to protest that he was momentarily possessed by a demon that forced him to stab his neighbor but is all fine now.