The fix as written only burdens one direction. Overturning the flag requires justification. Following it doesn't. That's not symmetric accountability, it's a built-in incentive to always ratify, since agreeing with the system stays cost-free and disagreeing is the only path that creates exposure.

This is already the pattern in medicine: clinicians increasingly follow decision-support tools specifically because deviating creates liability if they're wrong, while following the tool is defensible even when the tool is wrong. Apply that same shape to hiring or refereeing, and the fix accelerates the exact problem it's meant to solve.

The requirement has to run both ways. Agreeing with a bad flag and being wrong needs to cost something too, not just disagreeing and being wrong. Otherwise "defensible and appealable" becomes a form filled out the same way regardless of what actually happened in the person's head, the same rubber stamp, just with more paperwork attached.