Meet Ned Gravel, who claims to be an experienced peer assessor with the Asia Pacific Accreditation Cooperation (APAC) and training manager for the accreditation body IAS. If you recall, I have a lot to say about both of those organizations, not much of which is good. The short version is that APAC is a corrupt shit-show, allowing any certificate mill it wants to get full IAF membership, and IAS is … well, problematic.
Ned thought he’d get up in my junk over at LinkedIn after I posted some exhaustion about how IAS and other accreditation bodies have no damn problem selling training services for stuff they later accredit, despite this being a conflict of interest visible from fucking outer space. But if I tried to step into their patch and offer accreditation, they’d be apoplectic. It’s a one-sided tilt that conveniently helps those who made the rules.
Here is just one example of IAS trampling on my daisies:
That ad alone is rife with conflicts of interest. You see, IAS is selling internal auditor training on “all standards,” including all the ones they do assessments on. Those standards include ISO 17021-1 and ISO 17025, both of which require (wait for it) internal auditing. So IAS is totally selling services for stuff they will audit later.
It’s a convenient trick; IAS can go into one of their client CBs and write a nonconformity against the client’s internal audit program, which is then conveniently solved if you pay IAS a few more bucks and take their training. Then, we are supposed to believe that IAS will be totally objective and impartial when they audit a client who took their own IAS training. If their client’s internal auditors still suck, will IAS write a finding against their own training?
Don’t count on it.
Now, there’s no evidence IAS is doing that, but the optics are bad. In the old days, this was considered an overt conflict of interest and prohibited. But then the ABs like UKAS and RAB (now ANAB) started influencing CASCO, the ISO body that writes the standards that apply to ABs themselves. They had the standards rewritten to allow “public” training, so long as the training isn’t customized for any specific client. That was hogwash, as it is still very much a conflict of interest, but ISO and IAF don’t care. They have to keep their bottom-feeding CB and AB clients happy, and are not about to implement rules to improve the trust of accreditations — even though that’s their job.
In response to my post, Ned thought he’d smugsplain (I just made up that term, so give me credit later) on why this is not a conflict of interest, even as he openly admits to one:
Read this part again:
We do sell training that pertains to CASCO standards we [sic] accredit against for a simple reason. We need [CBs] to better represent our accreditation symbol. If a lab messes up, the regulator will spend 5 minutes looking at the lab and the rest of the time looking at the AB that “recognized their competence.”
In case the conflict of interest inherent in that statement is not screaming at you like a Judas Priest track, here it is: Gravel just admitted that they sell training that directly impacts IAS’ audit activities. If a client doesn’t take their training, they risk getting an IAS finding because IAS is worried they will get blamed later for having accredited a shitty certification body. Of course, IAS could just do its job and audit a client against ISO 17021-1 and then NOT accredit them when they suck, but then IAS wouldn’t make any money. So if you accredit shitty CBs, and then sell them on “internal auditing courses,” you can take the shitty CB’s money twice.
So IAS can go in, and if they feel the CB “doesn’t represent their accreditation symbol well,” they can write a finding, which is then — again — conveniently solved if you pay them some extra money for their $500-a-pop bullshit training classes.
Don’t get me started on Gravel telling me I need to refer to the standard as “ISO/IEC 17021” instead of the shorthand “ISO 17021.” I did feel quite pleased with myself when I told him that he was still wrong: it’s actually “ISO/IEC 17021-1” (dash one), proving I can be a pedantic prick, too.
It starts to make sense how APAC can let criminals into their ranks after an alleged “peer evaluation” by the likes of Ned Gravel.
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
