This should be in the basic skill set of a qualified Architect.  As a visiting, consulting or newly arrived senior IT Architect, Architecture Director or Enterprise Architect one should be able to start right with system validation questions.  After finding documentation on the enterprise system landscape, the consulting architect should be able to continue this discovery process by asking SWOT questions.  And these should be both in terms of business capabilities (functional effectiveness, usability) and technology production issues (reliability, maintainability, data quality).

More on this later …