ANAB Rules — Cryptically — on the Smithers Complaint

A while back I filed a complaint against ISO 9001 and Sn9001 registrar Smithers alleging collusion with a single consultant (John Allin) with whom they co-hosted a series of training events, and have had other ties — with some appearing financial — that my people felt violated the ISO 17021 accreditation rules. Those rules demand that CBs and consultants do not co-market each other’s activities, and remain independent, so that when the CB audits the consultant’s clients, an objective result emerges. Based on the evidence, I argue, there’s no way to expect Smithers to give an honest assessment of any John Allin client, since it they “beat up” John Allin, they put their investments and marketing with him at risk.

Simple, right?

Smithers denied the complaint, saying they had done an investigation — of which they offered no proof — and found nothing wrong. So it got escalated to ANAB. ANAB’s Randy Dougherty dismissed the complaint immediately, without conducting an investigation other than to get some one-sided information from Smithers. In his dismissal he openly revealed his personal feelings on the matter, offering praise for Smithers and its management, while indicating his negative predisposition towards me, who he claimed had “an agenda.”

That prompted me to call Randy out on the mess. Such an opinionated dismissal, without proper investigation, was itself a violation of ANAB’s requirements under ISO 17011. (Not that it matters, the next higher authority of appeal would be the IAF, where Randy is President. If he was unlikely to give Smithers a proper and objective assessment, he is less likely to give himself one.)

The problem is that the entire SN9001 arrangement stinks. Smithers worked with — guess who — ANAB to create SN9001, based on some industry standards developed (partly) by John Allin. So the three organizations — Smithers, ANAB and Allin — all have invested time, money and marketing into this thing, and have mingled that marketing so that they often refer to each other in the process.  Smithers is the only SN9001 registrar, ANAB is the only SN9001 accreditation body, and Allin is the only SN9001 consultant. Have a problem with any of them? You’re out of luck.

Then Bob Cruse of ANAB called and said he was taking over the investigation and re-opening the complaint. He telegraphed that he felt the complaint had merit. That was back in August. I recently wrote to Bob to find out what is happening, since it had been a few months without any word, and he said he had been busy “dealing with a number of hot aerospace scheme issues that have taken priority” but that he’d get back on it.

Two days ago I received a follow up from Mr. Cruse:

Hello, Chris

A review of evidence provided to support allegations cited in this complaint and other available public resources (e.g. websites), ANAB has determined that this complaint is partially valid and corrective measures have been levied upon SQA management for action.

Thank you for bringing this issue to ANAB’s attention through our complaint process so that an investigation and appropriate, subsequent warranted corrective measures could be applied.

Best regards,

Bob Cruse

As of today I see the status of the complaint (#490) is set to “Open- Correction Required.”

Now, I don’t know what parts of the complaint were determined valid and, more importantly, what parts weren’t.  As a result, I have no idea what part of the complaint the “corrective measures” were issued in response to. So I have no way of knowing if Smithers will be in compliance moving forward, because I have no idea what to watch for.

Will they cancel their events with consultant John Allin? Will they pull the SN9001 marketing with him? Will they pull the Blog Talk Radio appearances that Smithers made on Allin’s consulting site?

Was there a financial quid pro quo going on (because of Allin’s “grant” offer for training attendees)? If so, was this offer revoked? Did any money have to get refunded for those that paid and didn’t get a grant? Does this lead to any FTC  or consumer protection concerns?

Is the ANAB ruling an actual citation of nonconformity to 17021 issued against Smithers? A risk to their accreditation? Or is it just a sternly worded note?

Will Smithers make a public statement? Are they required to publicly correct the record in the same forums as where the offending marketing occurred? Or can it all be resolved in silence?

What about Smithers’ claim they did an internal investigation and found nothing wrong? If ANAB found something, then doesn’t this cast doubt on Smithers internal procedures? What is ANAB doing to ensure Smithers isn’t dismissing complaints out of hand?

How can I, as the complainant, know if I am satisfied with the actions taken, if they are not revealed to me?

But Wait, There’s More…

Here’s a more pressing issue. The company About Time Snow issued a press release only a few weeks ago announcing it “completed its Pre-Audit Gap Assessment with John Allin Consulting, and is almost ready for its stage 1 audit with Smithers Quality Assessment next month.” Technically, any conflicts of interest between the parties would force ANAB to demand that Smithers recuse itself from the audit, and a different registrar — one without ties to Allin — would have to be assigned. The problem? Smithers is the only ANAB accredited SN9001 registrar, so there is no one else to choose.

Meaning, that Smithers is guaranteed the work with About Time Snow, because ANAB would face a lawsuit from About Time Snow if it pulled Smithers’ accreditation, leaving About Time Snow with no possible means of becoming SN9001, after all its work and investment. That’s not about to happen.

And guess what. This is exactly the scenario I predicted previously:

ANAB is also ignoring the fact that there are no other registrars which offer SN9001, and this creates a monopoly problem that dramatically harms the objective process. ANAB could never de-accredit Smithers no matter what level of misbehavior they get into, because they have no other registrar to transfer them to.

A request for more information hasn’t been answered. In the past, ANAB has invoked the usual opacity defense, saying such details are “confidential” so it’s unlikely we will never get an actual record of what happened, what was done, and why ANAB eventually signed off on it as acceptable.

So it appears that once again, an accreditation body has done the bare minimum to maintain a greasy sheen of an appearance of an illusion of an inkling of responsibility. ANAB can say it took action against Smithers, even though we have no idea what that was other than to send me a private email on the matter. Behind the scenes, no one gets hurt, and business (probably) goes on as usual. Smithers and their consultant pals will just know to be more cautious in their public-facing actions.

Well, it’s not quite over yet, let’s see if the About Time Snow audit is allowed to go through. Somehow I expect them to pass with flying colors.