The best answer is C. Identifying the primary stakeholders and their needs . In PMI-CPMAI, the first work in shaping an AI initiative is to understand the business problem, the affected stakeholders, and the requirements that define success. The official exam outline includes gathering business requirements, aligning AI initiatives with organizational goals, defining success criteria, and identifying stakeholders and their expectations as part of the early business understanding and solution-definition work.

This is especially important in fraud detection because multiple stakeholder groups are involved, such as fraud investigators, compliance teams, operations leaders, customers, and executives. Their needs determine what matters most: detection speed, false-positive tolerance, explainability, escalation workflow, auditability, and regulatory alignment. PMI’s CPMAI materials also use fraud detection as an example of a pattern and anomaly detection use case, reinforcing that the project should start with the problem context and stakeholder expectations before evaluating model quality, scalability, or downstream ethical controls.

The other choices matter later, but they are not the best initial task. You cannot assess current-method accuracy, AI scalability, or ethical implications well until the key stakeholders and business requirements are clearly defined. That is why stakeholder identification is the strongest PMI-aligned starting point.