Company Research: Resolving Conflicting Sources
Public sources disagree constantly. A documented resolution rule is what turns research into data.
4 min read · Updated 2026-01-15
Rank your sources
Decide in advance which source wins when two disagree, and record the source used on the record itself.
Escalate rather than guess
Ambiguous records should go to a second reviewer. Guessing is the fastest way to lose trust in a dataset.
Key takeaways
- Public sources disagree; the resolution rule is the deliverable.
- Rank sources by authority and recency before research begins, not per record.
- Record which source won and why, so the decision can be reviewed later.
A source hierarchy that holds up
Registry filings first for legal identity, the company's own site for current trading and structure, professional profiles for role information, and press or directory sources last as corroboration only.
Applying the same hierarchy across a project is what makes two researchers produce the same answer from the same evidence.
When nothing resolves the conflict
Occasionally two credible sources disagree and neither is clearly more current. Picking one and moving on creates a fact the file cannot defend.
We record both values, flag the conflict, and note what would resolve it. Clients routinely resolve a handful of these internally in minutes, using knowledge no public source holds.
Practitioner note: the conflict log is often the most useful part of a research delivery, because it shows exactly where the market data is genuinely ambiguous.