What Value Do you Get from a Certification Body Audits?

You are often looking at certification to ISO standards from your own point of view.

So what is a Certification Body's (CB) views on ISO certification?

We were lucky enough to have Leon Michailidis from Equal Assurance join us at our annual Mango Partner Conference in Perth this year. He discussed some really interesting topics around auditing.

In this forth and final video of the series, Leon addresses some of the challenges the certification bodies and the wider community are facing.

Relevance of Certification

Leon states that one risk to the compliance industry is the relevance of the accredited certificate to an ISO standard. 

For example, he suggests that an ISO 9001 certificate should be enough to prove that the client has systems and processes in place that give their customers the confidence to know that if something doesn't go right the client will make it right.   Therefore why are there vendor evaluation systems in place that ISO 9001 easily covers.

Second Party Audits

Leon has come across clients who have so little confidence in the certification period that they started to do their own internal certification program. 

He says that this makes the whole system farcical, as an industry we need to look at how we can reignite the trust in the certificates we issue.

Blockchain Technologies

Another area increasingly appearing is the building of trust through the supply chain.  Leon explains Blockchain as "a fool proof method of  building trust through a supply chain from manufacture to utility"  

Therefore, what is the role of the certifier role if technologies like this are aligned and work efficiently?  

Ageing Workforce

The average age of an auditor is 56-years old*.

While this isn't 'old' this is the age where we're looking to slow down and taking it easier.  

How does the industry attract younger people that are also competent and actively decide to work towards becoming a certification or a systems auditor?

Tainted Image

There is corruption in the certification industry across first, second and third world countries. 

There are technologies that can fake certificates. This is a real risk to the compliance industry. Leon suggests a name and shame is an option for this.

Focus on Benefits

Stop focusing that the certificate on the wall and focus on improvement.

Takeaways 

1. Is ISO certification still relevant?
2. Are 2nd party audits making 3rd part audits irrelevant?
3. Blockchain is an emerging technology that may make CBs irrelevant.
4. CB auditors are getting older, this is a risk.
5. Be careful for the corrupt CB.
6. Focus on business improvement and not on the certificate on the wall.

*Exemplar Global 2015