The IAF won’t actually enforce its multilateral agreement or ensure its member accreditation bodies comply with ISO 17011, despite that being their actual job and what they are legally required — under international laws — to do, but they will allow people to take expensive trips and write it off as a business expense.
Meet Cynthia Woodley, a former Vice-Chair at ANSI and perennial ISO “convenor” who enjoys attending ISO and IAF conferences,. Over at LinkedIn, Woodley posted the quiet part out loud, because these folks lack both self-awareness and shame. She admitted that, “for over 10 years now, a group of us attending the International Accreditation Forum Inc have been going out to a Michelin Star restaurant one evening to enjoy friendship and great food.” Have a look before she deletes it:
That post was bookended by others wherein Woodley referenced the IAF meeting in Bangkok. Sure enough, the restaurant she visited is the Michelin star joint Chef’s Table by Lebua in Bangkok, where a bottle of Pouilly-Fumé can run around $600 and two peppers and a leaf cost over $50.
In her post, she name-checks prior IAF higher-ups like Randy Daugherty and Sean MacCurtain (formerly of CASCO, which writes the ISO 17011 standard that everyone ignores.)
A fwe days later, entirely tone-deaf to the scandal she was exposing, Woodley bragged about at a Four Seasons hotel in Thailand:
We enjoyed a wonderful 4 days at the Four Seasons Hotels and Resorts where Season 3 of “The White Lotus” was filmed! Our villa was wonderful! We had a couple of fantastic private meals – one on the beach and one in the hotel’s rum vault. A super special ending to a long trip away… a week in Geneva for ISO/IEC 17024 followed by a week in Bangkok for IAF.
Sure looks like “volunteering” has changed since the days of feeding homeless people at a food pantry or donating blood, hasn’t it?
It’s pretty goddamned shameless that a tax-exempt organization like IAF has to waste money on trips like this to begin with, especially since it has no intention of doing anything to enforce the rules it claims to develop. Instead, the IAF helps accreditation bodies violate both ISO 17011 and international laws, going so far as to block complaints alleging tax fraud, theft of service, and even hiring hookers to ensure your AB auditor goes easy on you. These are all acceptable under the IAF, and the members– like Woodley — look the other way since they are being handed opportunities to visit Michelin star restaurants and claim it as a “business expense” afterward.
It’s all a tax scam, but it’s an internationally recognized tax scam, so I guess it’s okay.
Now, to be clear, I haven’t looked at Woodley’s books. It’s entirely possible she and the others paid for this out of their own pockets and did claim it on their taxes. It’s also possible that a meteor will hit the moon and leave a crater that looks just like Leonardo DiCaprio.
UPDATE 21 October: I asked Woodley this exact question — whether she wrote this off on her taxes or now — and rather than answer, she pulled from the IAF playbook and deleted the comment without answering. Then, because I re-posted her original post under my own profile, where she cannot delete comments, she instead added this:
Christopher Paris, you are misinformed. I am not an IAF rep nor am I IAF. I work full time for a private, tax paying company. I pay my own way to IAF, pay for my own meals, and volunteer my time at both IAF and ISO. If I want to go out and have a nice dinner on my own dime there is nothing wrong with that. And if I invite some colleagues to join me, nothing wrong with that either. Additionally, I volunteer to serve on one WG at IAF (certification of persons). I have nothing to do with any other part of IAF including any MLAs or all of the things you are ranting about. I do not participate in any of these other aspects of IAF except certification of persons.
The argument that such folks are “volunteers” is specious, of course, and I previously debunked that here. Next, you can see how Woodley uses her role at IAF and ANSI to market her private consultancy here. That page goes into detail about her IAF work and even lists all the events she’s attended, presumably stopping by a fancy restaurant at each one. And, yes, by representing ANSI and her own company at IAF working group meetings, Woodley is an “IAF rep.”
But in the end, the IAF itself pays no taxes. Nor does ISO nor does CASCO nor does ANSI. Instead, we — the actual taxpayers — pay their taxes for them. When they use any government service, it’s our money they are using, not theirs. In return, they get to host meetings all over the world and pretend to be working.
They are not. The IAF is a fraud, and this post just proves how little they care if you know it. Sure, they could actually do their job and throw out the corrupt ABs in their ranks, and stop the deadly spread of defective products, falsified test results, environmental disasters, and more… but they’d rather sit around and drink $600 Pouilly-Fumé while we foot the bill.
UPDATE 23 October 2025. Added Woodley’s new post from Thailand.
UPDATE 24 October 2025. Woodley has now blocked me on LinkedIn. This is how IAF folks deal with criticism. They operate in a bubble of privilege and care not one bit about how their actions affect the stakeholders who rely on their work. They do not want anyone upsetting their five-star vacations and Michelin star dinners.
Christopher Paris is the founder and VP Operations of Oxebridge. He has over 35 years’ experience implementing ISO 9001 and AS9100 systems, and helps establish certification and accreditation bodies with the ISO 17000 series. He is a vocal advocate for the development and use of standards from the point of view of actual users. He is the writer and artist of THE AUDITOR comic strip, and is currently writing the DR. CUBA pulp novel series. Visit www.drcuba.world
