As the author of this hypothetical function, i take the stance that it is Not My Problem(tm). My flawless (haha!) docs clearly state that the function can take a plain scalar or a hashref; not a hash-based object. I contend that the burden falls on the you, the caller, to put the data in the condition my function expects.

Now if Perl doesn't provide a good way for you to do that, that is another argument entirely.