Inspection Evidence Foundations
introductory · 3 lessons · 3 min read
What inspection evidence is, why a verdict is not a record, and how to keep observations you can re-examine.
This course is free to read below. Enrollment, progress, quizzes, and certificates open with community membership.
A verdict is not a record
The difference between the decision and the evidence behind it.
A pass/fail verdict is a conclusion. Evidence is everything that would let a second person reach the same conclusion without having been there. When teams keep only the verdict, they keep the conclusion and throw away the reason — which is exactly what is needed when a decision is later questioned.
Working definition: if you can reconstruct a past decision from the record alone, it was evidence. If you need someone to remember, it was not.
The four parts of a defensible record
Observation, criteria, decision, and linkage — and why all four are required.
- Observation: the image, measurement, or reading itself — not a description of it.
- Criteria: the specific, versioned rule or tolerance that was applied.
- Decision: the verdict, plus who or what made it and when.
- Linkage: an unbroken chain tying the observation to the exact part, station, and moment.
Drop any one and the record becomes an assertion rather than evidence. The part most often lost is the observation, because it feels redundant once a verdict exists — until the day you need to look again.
Sealing: making a record tamper-evident
Why capturing is not enough, and how a hash + timestamp seals a record.
Evidence that can be quietly edited later is weaker than evidence that cannot. Content-hashing a record at the moment of capture makes any later change detectable: the stored hash will no longer match. A timestamp records when the observation was made. Together they let you show a record is the same one made at inspection time — no heavy infrastructure required.