Management of Impartiality & Conflicts of Interest
The CWB Group is committed to ensuring that all services are delivered in a consistent and impartial manner, free from conflict of interest, for all our stakeholders.
Impartiality is defined in the standards that CWB Group is accredited to by the Federal Government through the Standards Council of Canada (ISO 17025, ISO 17021-1), as the “presence of objectivity”. Objectivity means that conflicts of interest do not exist, or are adequately resolved so as not to adversely influence the activities of the CWB Group.
The CWB Group’s stakeholders include:
- Our clients (companies, engineers, supervisors and inspectors);
- The customers of our clients;
- Standards writing bodies;
- Regulatory bodies; and
- Consumers and members of the public.
The CWB Group has implemented numerous several robust controls to manage risks to impartiality and potential conflicts of interest, including:
- Management systems established, implemented and maintained whose mandate is to manage impartiality (ISO 17065, ISO 17021-1);
- Independent third party oversight of the effective implementation of these management systems by the Standards Council of Canada (SCC) and Authorized National Accreditation Board (ANAB);
- A corporate Enterprise Risk Management System based on ISO 31000, which includes the monitoring of risks to impartiality;
- A formal appeals and complaints mechanism for all stakeholders, including an externally managed confidential “whistleblower” service;
- Firewalled separation of business lines through CWB Group’s organizational and reporting structure, restrictions and controls on services delivered by CWB Group employees, restrictions on marketing promotional activities, and restrictions on client data access;
- A formal Standards of Business Conduct policy and training program for all employees which includes conflict of interest guidelines;
- Formal Conflict of Interest policies and procedures; and
- CWB Group Board of Directors oversight of the management of impartiality within the organization.
These controls are regularly reviewed by our internal “Committee to Safeguard Impartiality” and externally by the Standards Council of Canada.
The CWB Group is committed to ensuring that our organization is impartial in the manner in which it delivers our services as we continue to serve the Canadian welding sector, striving to ensure it remains competitive and sustainable in our global marketplace.
If you have any questions or concerns related to matters of impartiality and conflicts of interest related to CWB Group we want to hear from you. You can contact us by:
- Accessing our CWB ConfidenceLine service (for anonymous reporting) or
- Directly contacting our Registrar