GAICC is committed to impartiality in all of its certification activities, and manages threats to impartiality on an ongoing basis in line with ISO/IEC 17024.
Our impartiality statement
GAICC is a personnel certification body. It owns and controls its examinations and makes every certification decision independently of any training a candidate may have taken. Certification decisions are based only on objective evidence of a candidate's competence and are free from commercial, financial or other pressure. GAICC identifies, analyses and manages risks to its impartiality — including risks arising from its own preparation course and from every training relationship — under the oversight of an independent Impartiality Committee with balanced representation of interests.
GAICC offers training — and that is permitted
ISO/IEC 17024 does not prohibit a certification body from offering training. What it requires is that the body does not state or imply that its own training is required, easier, faster or otherwise advantageous for obtaining certification. GAICC therefore offers an optional self-paced course as one of three equal routes to meeting the training requirement:
Option 1 — GAICC self-paced course
GAICC offers its own optional self-paced course covering the required contact hours for your certification. It is one way to meet the requirement — it is not mandatory, is not required for certification, and confers no advantage in the examination.
- Fully self-paced eLearning on the GAICC learning platform
- Certificate of completion evidencing your contact hours
- Purchased separately from the examination fee
Option 2 — GAICC authorised training partners
Authorised Training Partners deliver the required hours in your region, instructor-led or online. Partners are approved against published criteria and are audited; they have no access to live examination content and no role in certification decisions.
- Instructor-led (in person or live virtual) or partner-delivered eLearning
- Certificate of completion stating provider, programme, hours and date
- Find a partner via the GAICC partner directory
Option 3 — Any equivalent recognised institution
You may complete the required hours through any equivalent recognised institution — a university, professional body, employer training function or independent provider — provided the training addresses the learning outcomes in the Exam Content Outline and you can evidence it.
- Training may be online or in person
- Must be evidenced by a certificate of completion stating the provider, programme title, duration (contact hours) and completion date
- Hours may have been earned at any time in your career, before application
- Applications may be selected for audit to verify training documentation
The controls that keep certification independent
Separation of decision
An independent Certification Decision Authority makes every certification decision, separate from examination preparation and delivery. Anyone who has trained a candidate is excluded from that candidate's certification decision.
Examination protection
GAICC authors, owns and controls all examination content. No training provider — including GAICC's own course team — has access to live examination content or any influence over scoring.
No advantage to GAICC's course
GAICC's self-paced course confers no preferential pricing, no exam-content access, no scoring benefit and no faster route. It is presented alongside partners and recognised institutions as an equal option.
Impartiality Committee
An independent committee with balanced interest representation oversees impartiality risks, reviews the risk register, and can require corrective action.
Declared and severed relationships
PM Training School — which shares a director — is declared and severed from authorised-provider status and treated no more favourably than any other provider.
Structural separation
Certification is presented and administered here, on this certification body portal. The training business, learning platform and course marketing operate separately at gaicc.org and hub.gaicc.org.
Precedent
Requiring a number of formal training hours as an eligibility criterion is established, accreditation-compatible practice among ISO/IEC 17024-accredited schemes — the PMP credential, for example, requires formal contact hours from any provider. What impartiality requires is that the certification body must not require or advantage its own training. GAICC does not.
Raise an impartiality concern
Anyone — candidate, certified person, employer or member of the public — may raise a concern about GAICC's impartiality, free of charge, through Appeals & complaints or by emailing support@gaicc.org. Concerns are handled by people not involved in the matter.