Effective risk management is a core function of assurance. 

Environmental and human rights-related risks can change depending on time, location and context, and assurance processes can also be vulnerable to integrity risks such as poor auditor competence or conflicts of interest. To ensure the accuracy and reliability of assurance results, ISEAL is supporting sustainability systems to understand where these risks arise and put processes in place to respond accordingly. 

By participating in peer-learning opportunities and making use of ISEAL’s tools and resources on this topic, Community Members are able to:

• identify whether they have the necessary foundations to identify and quantify risk (e.g., data strategy and data management foundations, robust risk management processes)
• devise strategies to manage critical risks to the integrity of assurance (e.g., measures to prevent conflict of interest, actions to improve auditor competence) – see this blog for more examples.

This project began in 2022 and has been made possible thanks to donor support from the Swiss State Secretariat for Economic Affairs (SECO). Learnings from our assurance integrity work complements ISEAL Innovations Fund projects, including:

• 4C - Enhancing social auditing in coffee supply chains
• ASI - Boosting risk-based approaches to assurance 

For more information, please contact Lucy Redmore (lucy@isealalliance.org) and Jessica Ginting (jessicag@isealalliance.org).