Yes, I'm a practising immigration consultant so I can speak to that. It is the case, though, that the applicant is punished for indirect or direct misrepresentation. The idea that you've proposed is possible, but it would require the applicant to become aware of the misrepresentation somehow while the application were still in process. If an application goes in with false information or misrepresentation, it is possible in theory, if it were an honest mistake and you discovered it, to contact the office before an error is induced in the act by the information, and correct the information, and there was no harm no foul in some cases. But it would be difficult to determine how....
The problem we're hearing is that people don't know that misrepresentation is happening. So by the time an officer realizes there was misrepresentation, it would be at the stage of refusal of an application, and they wouldn't know whether it was the representative or the applicant who was responsible for the error.