When using a parent/child ApplicationContext setup (as is very common for web apps using spring), it's possible to override a bean from a parent context by a bean in a child context. Almost always it is possible to use a cleaner solution, like giving parent bean and overriding bean unique names. From time to time I see others (and myself) making the mistake of declaring a bean in a child context that overrides a bean in a parent context by mistake. It would be valuable to have an inspection that flags any bean that overrides another bean (with same name) in a ancestor context. Default level would be "warning". Warning message should be descriptive enough too make clear where the overridden bean resides: for example "bean <current bean name> overrides bean with same name in parent fileset <overridden bean fileset name> (<name of file containing overridden bean>)"