Testimonial Evidence and UAPs

In this episode of THE SAMPLE, Leita Hart-Fanta explains auditing with testimonial evidence and UAPs are a great example from recent headlines.

Welcome to The Sample, a quick discussion of auditing concepts and terms that will help you do your work. Conducting an audit in accordance with auditing standards is no small feat and I want to support you. We’ll be referring to the GAO, IIA and AICPA literature to bolster our conversations. Let’s get started.

Transcript

Today we talk about testimonial evidence and view it in light of recent congressional hearings on alien spacecraft. No, it’s a little silly, but hang in with me here. You know the word alien spacecraft, or the words alien spacecraft, are no longer the correct terminology. UFO isn’t a cool word to use either. Those in the know are using the term ‘Unidentified Anomalous Phenomenon.’ Holy cow. What a mouthful. So, I’m going to use an acronym ‘UAP.’

Testimonial evidence and UAPs

In July of 2023, three high ranking military professionals testified to Congress that UAPs do indeed exist. I saw this in the newsfeed and became very alarmed.

So, I listened to the entire testimony, and then I expected the whole country, maybe even the whole world, to go crazy, to go completely wild. I mean, UAP hovering over California, a military base in California, seemed to me to be the biggest news story of my lifetime, possibly of world history. Instead, amazingly, the story dropped out of the newsfeed within a couple of days, and nobody seemed to care. “Why?” I wondered.

I talked to some of my friends about it, and some of them didn’t even hear about this testimony. A lot of them didn’t even care and kind of poo-pooed the whole idea of UAPs. I thought, “Wow, that is really weird,” and thought to apply my auditor brain to the situation. So, I pulled out my Yellow Book and I dug in regarding the evidence standards. What we’re dealing with here, with this testimony, obviously, is testimonial evidence.

But there are two other types of evidence per the Yellow Book: physical and documentary. Let’s look at those other types of evidence and see if we can become convinced that UAPs do indeed exist.

Physical evidence is usually pretty convincing. It includes videos, pictures, radar images, in this case, physical objects. One of the military professionals who’s testifying said the government was in possession of a downed spacecraft and some biological remains that were being studied. Of course, those items weren’t brought to the hearing, and each video, picture and radar image was immediately scrutinized. Many experts doubt that the images are real. I mean, think of the supposed “photo” of the Loch Ness monster. That blurry photo of the Loch Ness monster. So, alright, maybe physical evidence wouldn’t stand up.

What about documentary evidence?

That includes reports from witnesses who actually saw the spacecraft.

Now, you could argue that these documents were just transcripts of testimonial evidence, which as we all know is pretty weak. The military professionals did, however, recommend that the government collect reports from pilots, military pilots, civilian pilots, other countries, and then analyze the data so you could start to see patterns in the behavior of the UAPs. There’s a lot of documentary evidence that exists. It’s just not collected, organized and analyzed. That sounds a lot like a typical audit finding, doesn’t it, of some of our audit clients? You’ve got some documents, but we can’t pull it all together.

And then we get to the final type of evidence, which is all we have in this case, or all I have as a citizen not being part of the military, and that is testimonial evidence. Of course, it’s the weakest type. This paragraph from the Yellow Book indirectly shows that documentary and physical evidence trump testimonial evidence every time.

It’s kind of like a rock/paper/scissors game where testimonial evidence usually loses. It says here in the Yellow Book, testimonial evidence may be useful in interpreting or corroborating documentary or physical evidence. You use it to bolster it, not to stand alone, is kind of what they’re implying here.

Then it goes on to say documentary evidence may challenge testimonial evidence, so that means it trumps, or overrides, testimonial evidence. But, in our case, with this congressional testimony, that’s all we’ve got to go on. And that may be your case on an audit. If you do decide to rely on testimonial evidence, the GAO requires the auditor to evaluate the objectivity, credibility and reliability of this evidence.

On the topic of objectivity, why would the military professionals lie? It can’t be comfortable to put your career on the line telling the world you saw a UAP. You don’t want to be doubted for the rest of your life and have your colleagues think you’re a kook.

Auditors have to put ourselves on the line a lot, right?

We have to say things that people don’t want to hear and endanger our career. We could get fired if we tell the truth. These guys were also putting their careers on the line, so I’d have to give them props for objectivity and truth telling.

Now, on the topic of credibility, the military professionals described their rank and their background and their position. Although I’m not that aware or educated about military organizations and how everybody’s related, they sounded credible to me. Their background sounded credible to me. And on the third criteria, which is reliability, that reliability has to do with coming from a knowledgeable source. Well, these military professionals that were testifying were pilots and had seen the UAPs themselves.

So they knew what airplanes looked like. They knew what other objects in the air looked like to them. These UAPs did not look like anything they’d ever seen before. They saw them firsthand. I’d say the testimonial evidence passed the test of being objective, credible and reliable. But is that testimonial evidence enough to go on to make your conclusions? No, probably not.

Testimonial evidence is seldom enough to base an entire finding or a conclusion on. The bottom line is if I was, let’s say, a military auditor and I was being asked to conclude whether UAPs were real, I couldn’t just rely on the testimony. I would have to see some reports. I’d have to have a healthy sample of these reports, some videos, some pictures. I’d have to be allowed to see the downed UAP and this bio matter that was collected. How about you? I’d love for you to apply your auditor brain to UAPs and let me know what you come up with.

Want to learn more about evidence?

We suggest this short video course entitled “Choosing the Best Audit Test Plus Audit Documentation.” In it, you will learn more about the three types of evidence and qualities of good audit test while earning 2.5 hours of NASBA certified CPE that qualifies for Yellow Book hours.

And that wraps it up for another episode of the Sample. True to the nature of a sample, we didn’t talk about everything, so you’ve probably got questions. Write to me at leita@yellowbook-cpe.com and I’ll do my best to fill in the blanks. Thanks for playing.