Starting situation:
If a laboratory is responsible for both sampling and testing in accordance with a contract, the impartiality requirement in clause 6.2.1 of 17025 also extends to the personnel used for sampling. Impartiality requires the ‘absence of conflicts of interest’.
Generally, there is a harmful conflict of interest if the sampling personnel is on the side of the client of the contract (customer of the laboratory) due to an employment relationship and if the customer of the laboratory also has an interest in the result of the analytical analysis (e.g. the accredited laboratory wants to use an employee of the owner of the drinking water supply system for an official drinking water analysis).
Question:
Is the conflict of interest described above adequately reduced for the purposes of accreditation if the sampler is required by law to implement an official sampling plan and the laboratory monitors compliance with this official sampling plan and the laboratory discloses, manages and monitors the conflict of interest in its risk assessment?
This situation describes a risk to impartiality that should be identified by the laboratory, so that the laboratory shall be able to demonstrate how it eliminates or minimizes such risk to ensure that he safeguard impartiallty.
The action described in the question may be one of the measures adopted by the laboratory to minimize or eliminate the risk to impartiality. However, it is necessary to consider all relevant aspects and scenario to ensure that this only measure effectively guarantees that the laboratory operates impartially.
Additionally it is necesary to remember that ISO/IEC 17025 requires the risk aproach related to impartiality to be conducted on an ongoing basis. Therefore, it is not possible to either confirm or refuse that this specific action alone guarantees impartiality in the laboratory´s activities.Nevertheless, this is an assessment decision and the definitive answer must be taken during the assessment with all the information.