Independence is architectural.
The credibility of assurance depends on who operates the system, who evaluates it, and who can challenge the result.
Independence is not created by changing the title of the reviewer. It follows from decision rights, information access, incentives, reporting lines, and the ability to reach an adverse conclusion.
Complex systems often distribute responsibility across developers, vendors, business owners, risk functions, legal teams, operators, executives, auditors, and regulators. That distribution can strengthen control or create gaps in which everyone participates but no one can independently establish what occurred.
An assurance architecture should therefore define the boundary between management operation, second-line oversight, specialist evaluation, and independent assurance. It should also identify conflicts, preserve direct access to source evidence, and prevent the party being evaluated from controlling the evidentiary record on which the evaluation depends.
Not every question requires formal independence. The degree of separation should follow the consequence of error and the reliance placed on the result. The architecture should make that choice explicit.