Independence and verification

What "verified" means here

A credential marked as held on certificate means one thing precisely: a person has read the certificate itself, and recorded the issuing body and the year as the document states them. It does not mean the qualification was assessed for quality, that the issuing body was evaluated, or that the holder is competent at the thing the certificate names.

Above all it does not mean this practice vouches for that person’s work. We verify paperwork, not outcomes. Anyone reading a listing here should read it as "these documents exist and were examined" and no further.

The rule cuts both ways, and it costs us. Qualifications a CV lists but no certificate supports do not appear, however genuine they may be. A course attended without sitting the assessment is recorded as attendance and not as the qualification.

The conflict we have not solved

Verification is a role, and today the founder holds it — the same person who sells the work. That is a conflict. It is recorded here rather than left for someone to notice, because a practice whose argument is verification cannot be silent about who does the verifying.

It gets sharper, not softer, as the practice hires: when the people whose credentials are checked become the founder’s own employees, the person checking has an interest in what the check finds.

Verification here is one person reading documents. It is a human bottleneck and it does not scale — which is a limit on how many people can ever be listed, not a problem to be solved with software. Automated credential review does not work, and this practice has the evidence: a colleague’s certificate carries a qualification in bold, an accreditation mark twice, a course number and an examiner’s signature, and the sentence that negates all of it is one line of body text saying he did not sit the assessment. Any automatic check would have passed it.

We are not promising an independent verifier who does not exist. When the role moves to someone else, this page will name them and the date. Until it does, the answer to "who checks the checking" is: one person, named on the team page, and this paragraph.

How a listing is withdrawn

A badge that cannot be withdrawn is not a verification, so the procedure is written here rather than left to judgement at the time.

Who decides: whoever holds the verification role — today the founder. Not a committee, because there is not one, and saying there is would be the same kind of claim this page exists to avoid.

On what grounds: a credential turns out not to be supported by the certificate behind it; a document proves not to be genuine; the person withdraws consent; a written agreement between us ends; or conduct in an engagement makes the listing untenable. The first three are matters of fact and act immediately.

When: a listing comes down first and is discussed afterwards. A page that stays up during a disagreement is a claim still being made, and the person named on it carries that whether or not they agree with the reason.

What happens to the page: the profile is removed, not edited to say less. The person is told which credential or which document caused it, in writing, and may answer. If the answer resolves it, the listing returns unchanged. Nothing about a withdrawal is published — an empty space says enough, and a public explanation would injure somebody over a matter that may turn out to be a filing error.

Where we advise, we do not certify

A consultant who designs or implements a management system cannot then audit it for certification. Where this practice has built a system, an independent body carries out the certification audit, and we say so rather than leaving the client to discover the constraint late.

The same applies to independent assurance work. Where a conflict exists it is named before the engagement begins, not disclosed afterwards in a report nobody reads to the end.