ISSC Impartiality Policy
1. ISSC undertakes its validation and verification activities with impartiality.
2. ISSC is responsible for the impartiality of its validation and verification activities and does not allow commercial, financial, or other pressures to compromise impartiality.
3. ISSC monitors its activities and its relationships to identify threats to its impartiality.
This monitoring includes the relationships of its personnel.
The mechanism ISSC uses to monitor impartiality is its annual impartiality meeting, where ISSC’s Managing Director reports on matters relevant to impartiality to the impartiality committee members (who are independent of operations). They provide feedback and guidance.
4. If a threat to impartiality is identified, ISSC eliminates or minimizes its effect so that impartiality is not compromised.
5. ISSC top management is committed to impartiality.
6. ISSC has made its commitment to impartiality public. See the “ISSC Impartiality Policy” on www.theissc.com
7. ISSC promotes impartiality by ensuring that the personnel responsible for independent reviews and final decisions on issuing opinions or reports of factual findings are different from those who carried out the validation or verification.
8. Should ISSC provide validation and verification to the same project proponent, ISSC would consider any potential threat to its impartiality from this circumstance and manage the risk accordingly.
ISSC understands this risk primarily arises when the subject matter is both validation and verification of a project, and not when a responsible party (organization or product owner) includes forward-looking statements in the scope for verification.
9. ISSC does not offer or provide both consultancy and third-party validation/verification for the same statement from the same client.
10. ISSC does not offer validation/verification services to clients or potential clients whose statements ISSC has helped formulate through the provision of consulting services.
11. ISSC does not market validation or verification services in any way that links them to the consulting activities of any organization.
12. ISSC will take action when it is made aware (through a complaint or otherwise) of inappropriate links or announcements by any external consultancy organization implying that validation or verification would be simpler, easier, faster, or less expensive if ISSC were used as a validation/verification body.
ISSC will not state or imply that validation/verification would be simpler, easier, faster, or less expensive if a specified consultancy organization were used.
13. ISSC will take action to respond to any threats to its impartiality arising from the actions of other persons, bodies, or organizations. This includes the actions of those bodies to which validation/verification activities have been outsourced.