Which of the following is a characteristic of the independent testing of a program?

Independent testers are not emotionally or cognitively invested in the code they are testing, which reduces confirmation bias and increases the likelihood of uncovering hidden features, backdoors, or undocumented functionality that the original developer may have overlooked or intentionally concealed. Their fresh, objective perspective means they probe the software without assumptions about how it 'should' behave, making hidden functionality more likely to surface during testing.

This is the opposite of reality; independent testing actually increases the likelihood of exposing hidden features precisely because testers have no prior knowledge of or attachment to the code's intended behavior.

Independent testing teams typically increase costs because they require additional resources, onboarding, and communication overhead; they do not help decrease the cost of creating test data or system design.

Functional requirements and Service Level Agreements (SLAs) are defined during the requirements and planning phases of the SDLC, not identified by independent testing teams whose role is to validate and verify the software after development.