Conflicts of interest

A certificate is only as trustworthy as the people behind the course and the decisions about it. This policy explains where a conflict of interest could arise at rTraining, what the platform enforces, and how a conflict is declared and managed.

A conflict of interest is any connection, interest or relationship that could influence, or could reasonably look as if it influences, a decision about a course, an assessment, a result or a certificate.

Writing and reviewing a course

A course version that carries an accreditation, or is applying for one, names an author, with their stated qualifications, and an independent reviewer, an expert who has read that version. Their names and qualifications are published on the course page. A course with no accreditation may instead be credited to the rTriibe team, and its course page says so; where it names people, the same rules below apply to them.

The database will not publish an accredited course version, or one applying for accreditation, unless the author and the reviewer are two different people. It checks this itself, when a version is published, rather than leaving it to anyone's judgement. It refuses a version where:

• there is no named author or no named reviewer;
• a name or a qualification is a placeholder rather than a real entry;
• the author and the reviewer have the same name, the same email address, or the same rTraining account.

A reviewer's sign-off is recorded by a person in the back office, who has to confirm that the reviewer has reviewed that version. Drafting help does not count as review: text drafted with an AI model goes through the same author and review as anything else. See Ask and AI use.

The database can check that two people are different. It cannot check that they are unconnected. That is what declarations are for.

Declaring a conflict

Before writing or reviewing a course version, an author or reviewer tells us about anything that could look like a conflict, for example:

• a close personal or working relationship with the other person named on the same version;
• a financial interest in a product, service or organisation that the course discusses or recommends;
• being employed by, or paid by, an organisation whose staff will be assessed on the course, where that could affect their judgement of the content;
• having written the guidance or material the course is being reviewed against, where that would make the review less than independent.

Authors and reviewers declare any conflict in writing before they start work on a course version, and the declaration is kept with that version's record. They renew it each year, and whenever something changes. The platform itself has no field for a declaration yet, so the declaration is kept alongside it rather than in it.

Marking, appeals and investigations

• Marking is automatic. Nobody marks an individual attempt, so nobody can favour one.
• An appeal is decided by somebody who was not involved in the decision being appealed. Where the point is about the subject matter, it goes to an expert who did not write the version the person sat. See the appeals policy.
• A malpractice investigation is carried out by somebody with no connection to the person or the course concerned. See malpractice and maladministration.
• Our own staff and their training. Where a member of our staff, or somebody close to them, takes one of our courses, that person does not handle any appeal, adjustment or investigation about it, and does not lift a lockout on it.

Anybody who finds they have a conflict in something they have been asked to decide must say so and step aside, and the decision goes to somebody else.

Staff actions are on the record

Every change our staff make in the back office is written to an audit log with the name of the person who made it, and that log cannot be edited or deleted from. That includes lifting a lockout, voiding an attempt, recording a review and publishing a course version. So if a conflict comes to light later, we can see exactly who did what and when.

Accrediting bodies

Where a course carries an accreditation or award, that body's own requirements on conflicts of interest apply as well and, where they are stricter, they apply instead. The course page names the body. No course carries one today, because our application to the CPD Standards Board has not yet been decided.

Raising a concern

If you think somebody involved in a course or a decision had a conflict they did not declare, email training@rtriibe.com with "complaint" in the subject line. We look into it under our complaints and appeals procedure, and where it affected a result, we put the result right.