What happens when evidence arrives but the condition it was meant to satisfy is not met?

A professional services firm's risk partner approves engagement ENG-3306 with one condition: the conflicts team must clear a related-party search before any billable work starts. The approval record shows status APPROVED-CONDITIONAL and a single open condition, COND-3306-1, owned by the conflicts team.

An engagement manager asks an agent to set up the project code and schedule the kickoff. The agent reads the approval, sees the open condition and creates the project in a held state instead of an active one. It posts a task to the conflicts queue referencing COND-3306-1.

Two days later the conflicts analyst attaches a search result that names a subsidiary of the client as a current counterparty in an unrelated matter. The condition does not move to satisfied. It moves to REFERRED, and the risk partner is asked to review. The agent sees the new state, leaves the project held and tells the engagement manager why.

Had the agent treated the attachment as proof of clearance, billable time would have started against an unresolved conflict, and the firm would have needed to write off work.

**What it teaches:** a condition has its own lifecycle, separate from the approval. Evidence arriving is not the same as a condition being met, and an agent has to read the outcome of the check, not just the presence of a document.