The qualification problem is the challenge of specifying all preconditions required for a real-world action to achieve its intended effect. In AI and knowledge-based systems, it illustrates why reasoning about action is difficult in open-ended environments where exceptions and hidden conditions may be numerous.
In philosophy and artificial intelligence (especially knowledge-based systems), the qualification problem is concerned with the impossibility of listing all of the preconditions required for a real-world action to have its intended effect. It might be posed as how to deal with the things that prevent me from achieving my intended result. It is strongly connected to, and opposite the ramification side of, the frame problem.