Assuming your gene of interest has been sequenced and deposited at the gene bank and you want to carry out some other studies on this same gene, for example, to study gene expression following some sort of treatment, should you follow due processes to sequence the gene, do multiple alignment and phylogenetic analysis to be sure that information from the gene bank and your results are homologous?.
I tend to sequence all the genes I work with. In my opinion, it is best to confirm the identity before spending significant amounts of time working with DNA that could not be what you are expecting. It will also save a lot of money if it turns on to be the wrong sequence.
Especially if you are getting the DNA from another source as it is an easy mistake to accidentally send the wrong DNA. Sometime, tubes can also get mixed up in labs with many people working with the same reagents.
I agree, it's also possible you would design primers that amplify other related genes eg from a general family and you wouldn't know this unless you sequenced them. So you could go ahead and spend time and money on RTPCR etc and then realise later it wasn't amplifying the right thing. Another thing to consider is some genes are annotated based on prediction, so confirming start and stop codons, utrs and introns and exons are probably just best guesses.
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