ISO/IEC 17020:2012, 4.1.3 The inspection body shall identify risks to its impartiality on an ongoing basis. This shall include those risks that arise from its activities, or from its relationships, or from the relationships of its personnel. However, such relationships do not necessarily present an inspection body with a risk to impartiality.
NOTE A relationship that threatens the impartiality of the inspection body can be based on ownership, governance, management, personnel, shared resources, finances, contracts, marketing (including branding), and payment of a sales commission or other inducement for the referral of new clients, etc.
According to ILAC P15:05/2020: “4.1.3 n1 “on an ongoing basis” means that the inspection body identifies a risk whenever events occur which might have a bearing on the impartiality of the inspection body”.
What is the real meaning of this clarification? How do you interpret the term “whenever events occur…”?
September 2014
It is not automatically sufficient if risks are analyzed once a year during management review. Events should be defined in the risk analysis (e.g. change of personnel or owner, merging/take-over of companies etc). Control measures against these risks shall be carried out regularly (when necessary).
Threads to impartiality can be divided into two groups: those that can be eliminated and those that need to be managed.
Only threads that need to be managed can be addressed by the ongoing analysis. Non repairable will lead to NCs with need to changes.
There should still be regular reviews of the risks that are deemed to be eliminated but those that need to be managed would require more frequent reviews and timescales for these would be commensurate with the level of risk.
Proactive analysis – before the event occurs – is recommended.