AbstractAs an emerging paradigm systems inquiry depends upon the credibility of those entities selected as ‘relevant’ and given the notation of ‘system’. The complexity of the subject of inquiry (the ‘real world’), the artificiality of the boundaries selectively imposed on some features of that ‘reality’ and the conditioned limitations of the imposer of such boundaries, combine to challenge, or at least call into question, the credibility of that paradigm. This paper discusses the significance of boundaries and their imposition as determining factors in specifying not just the quality of systems inquiries but, perhaps more importantly, the fundamental nature of such inquiries themselves. In addition, the conditioned limitations within which the inquirer seeks to identify and make manifest those understandings which are both systemic and relevant are examined together with the potential consequences of such limitations. The paper does not claim to exhaust the argument, m