If you use Styles correctly in Word, creating numbered lists in a consistent format (and maintaining a consistent format for an entire document) is a snap. The problem in the typical corporate environment is that few users know about (and probably care even less) about Styles and instead resort to crassly overriding any and every Style-based format with formats of their own. That approach simply makes it harder to maintain a given document, increases file sizes and makes the documents more prone to corruption.

You might try using Word's editing restrictions, so users can only employ a set of pre-defined Styles, but that's not going to prevent anyone from 'creatively' reformatting the content.

A better approach might be to limit the creation of important documents to those who have been trained to use the relevant Styles correctly.

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Cheers,
Paul Edstein
[Fmr MS MVP - Word]