Global Standards Assurance (GSA) shall treat information about a Client from other sources (such as a complaint or a legal regulator) as confidential. To ensure there is no conflict-of-interest GSA will:

1. Take responsibility for demonstrating that there is no conflict of interest with a client.
2. Ensure no GSA -related business has provided certification to the client receiving consultancy and vise versa.
3. Set up a register of potential conflict of interests and impartiality.
4. Register to be established for all activities to track any potential conflict of interest.
5. GSA is only engage in improvement programs of organisations who are not their audit client.

To ensure Impartiality GSA will:

• Make an independent and impartial certification decision based on evidence of conformity with a standard collected during an audit or examination.
• Change auditors or verifiers if familiarity with the Client is suspected or the Client makes threats.
• Seek objective evidence during an audit. The evidence can be records, observed or oral.
• Seek to verify evidence with other evidence from another part of the Client’s business, if possible.
• Be resilient to intimidation threats.
• Take steps to rectify any/all inappropriate claims by any consultancy organisation that certification with GSA would be simpler, easier, faster, or less expensive if they were engaged.
• Not provide certification when there is a threat to impartiality.
• Not provide certification services to any other business related to GSA, its parent company(s) or subsidiary company(s).
• Not provide internal audits or certification consultancy, design, manufacture, install, promote, sell and other services to current Client’s schemes that it certificates.
• Not provide certification services to a Client to whom we have provided internal audit or consultancy services, unless two years have passed from the end of the contract.
• Not certify the management systems of another certification body.
• Not allow others to influence our decisions on granting certification.
• Not allow the same person to carry out an audit and examination and to review them.
• Not subcontract audit services to a business where there is a threat to impartiality; for example, a management consultancy business, but this excludes individuals.
• Not market our services in connection with any other management systems consultancy.
• Recognise that threats to impartiality can come from ownership, governance, management, personnel shared resources, finances, contracts, marketing and payment of commission or inducement for new Clients.
• Recognise that a Client will pay for certification services and that is a source of impartiality.
• Recognise that personal self-interest is a source of impartiality.
• Recognise that a person carrying out a review of an audit is a source of impartiality.