Our Impartiality Commitment

As a commitment to maintain confidence and credibility in our certification process, IQNet Ltd recognises the importance of safeguarding impartiality in its management system certification and assessment activities, manages any potential conflict of interests and ensures the objectivity of the certification process.

Our policy as a certification body is to provide confidence, to act and to be perceived impartial by all parties that have an interest in certification, such as our clients, customers of our certified clients, governmental authorities, non-governmental and industry associations, research and education institutions, workers’ unions, employers’ unions, consumers and community.

In order to ensure the impartiality, it is our policy to base our decisions on objective evidence of conformity with the reference standards and/or documents, without being influenced by other interests or parties.

IQNet Ltd maintains systems to ensure the principles of impartiality are upheld. Measures used by IQNet Ltd to ensure impartiality include:

•  The appointment of independent certification decision-making personnel, individually assigned for each specific certification decision. The personnel involved in making certification decisions have the authority to decide on the granting, renewal, extension, reduction, suspension or withdrawal of an organisation’s certification. Impartiality is ensured by requiring technically qualified resources to review key process records and events when deciding on the certification status. Such personnel is assigned in a manner that ensures they were not involved in the organisation whose certification status is under review and neither in the assigned assessment team for the respective organisation, in a manner that could affect impartiality;

• The use of competent personnel, acting impartially and not allowing commercial, financial or other pressures to affect impartiality, throughout the certification processes (including audit processes and certification decision making processes);

• The awareness and accountability of the personnel involved in the certification processes (including audit processes) through binding agreements related to impartiality and conflict of interests and the obligation to reveal any situations which might influence impartiality or generate a conflict of interests;

• The non-involvement of IQNet Ltd or its Representatives in the provision of any consultancy services or internal audit services to its certified clients;

• The establishment of an impartiality committee, composed of parties interested in certification, aimed at reviewing the impartiality and independence of the audit, certification and decision-making processes and counteracting any tendency on the part of IQNet Ltd to allow commercial or other considerations to prevent the consistent objective provision of certification services. The impartiality committee is empowered and reports directly to the top management. Its advice shall be respected and acted in the most effective manner.

This policy is applicable to IQNet Ltd management, committee members and personnel, either directly employed or acting on behalf of IQNet Ltd (including auditors, technical specialists, translators, observers, etc.). This policy extends to all IQNet Ltd operations, including operations conducted by any IQNet Ltd Representatives offices, subsidiaries and personnel in connection to the services under the scope of the signed Representative Agreement.