Not necessarily! In 1989, I was called from NB to Halifax to work with a water intrusion specialist flown in from Toronto. This was a large luxury condo project directly on the waterfront with no protection from horizontal wind driven rains. In its first 2-3 years, areas of brick veneer had been opened up numerous times to correct leakage problems. This last measure was to find the last 5-6 leaks that local masons and the developer could not find.
Things we found:
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Water from 1 story up can enter the floor you’re working on. In this case, the water traveled between the loosely installed tarpaper and sheathing for over a storey before it got into insulation and then eventually entered at the concrete floor slab/bottom plate/baseboard. With a brick veneer exterior, the first part of the leakage path would not be found with IR
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Water can move 5 inches up over flashings
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With horizontal, high wind driven rain that occurs infrequently, opening up a wall/ceiling to look for moisture can be frustrating. Since the condition doesn’t occur with every rain, the area has now dried out and there may be only a minor stain and no mould growth. IR will not find this unless scanned immediately after an occurrence.