Dirty data—inaccurate, redundant, or outdated information—has been the bane of many organizations struggling to use information for higher performance. Yet corporate-wide data cleansing seems so overwhelming that many businesses delay or defer even trying. Can a company live with dirty data? Yes, and no.

Of course data quality matters. But dirty data isn’t always bad—at least not equally bad. Stated another way, not all information has to be equally clean or has to be cleansed at the same time.

What matters most is data that is central to achieving high performance. It’s the data that, if managed incorrectly, will drag down business performance but, if managed correctly, has a powerful upside.