Committee Terms of Reference.
Distributed authority so no single person controls the standard, the exam and the decisions.
Overview
Good governance spreads power. PCI’s committees ensure that setting the standard, running the examination and making decisions are overseen by different people with the right competence and no conflicts.
At a glance
The committee functions
- A scheme committee that owns the standard and examination framework
- An impartiality function safeguarding objectivity
- An appeals and complaints function independent of original decisions
- Quality oversight of audit and improvement
How committees decide
PCI applies this consistently and records what it does, so the process can be checked and improved. The detail is governed by the related policies linked below and is published as the institute matures.
Common questions
Why does PCI use committees?
To distribute authority so the standard, the exam and decisions are not controlled by one person.
How are conflicts managed?
Members are free of conflicts for the matters they consider, under the conflict-of-interest policy.
Are committee decisions recorded?
Yes — decisions are taken within defined authority and recorded.
Why this matters
Clear policies matter because they are how fairness is made real. A certification body that treats everyone consistently — on eligibility, conduct, security, impartiality and appeals — is one whose decisions can be trusted, and whose credential therefore means the same thing for everyone who holds it. These pages set out those commitments plainly.
PCI states its position honestly, including where processes are still being established. The aim is not legal cover for its own sake but genuine, transparent governance — the substance that lets a credential, and the body behind it, earn and keep professional trust.
- Substance over marketing
- Fair, transparent process
- Honesty about our status
- Responsible, governed use of AI
Founding-stage document · Version 1.0 — effective date to be confirmed · Reviewed under PCI governance. PCI makes no claims of accreditation or recognition beyond what is true today.
What terms of reference actually fix
Terms of reference are the difference between a committee and a conversation. For each PCI committee, they pin down the same essentials, in writing, before the committee acts:
Mandate and scope
What the committee decides, what it only recommends, and what lies outside its remit entirely — so authority is never assumed by habit.
Composition and competence
The mix of expertise required — technical, assessment, governance — so decisions are made by people qualified to make them.
Quorum and decision rules
How many members must participate, how decisions are taken, and what is recorded — protecting decisions from being made by whoever happened to be in the room.
Reporting lines
Who each committee answers to and what it must disclose, so oversight is structural rather than optional.
Conflicts and recusal
The duty to declare interests and step out of affected decisions, applied per item, not just at appointment.
Review cycle
Terms are themselves reviewed periodically, so the structure keeps pace with the programme as it grows.
Why the roles never collapse into one
The separation between committees is the point of the design. The people who set the competency standard do not write the examination that tests it; the people who develop the examination do not make certification decisions about individual candidates; and anyone reviewing an appeal must have had no hand in the decision being appealed. Each handover between groups is a check — a second set of qualified eyes that the previous stage was done properly. No single person, however senior, can define the standard, examine against it and award the credential. That structure is what makes the wider governance framework and the impartiality policy enforceable in practice rather than aspirational on paper.
How the committees are staffed
How are committee members appointed?
Against the competence requirements in each committee's terms of reference, with declared interests reviewed before appointment. Members serve defined terms rather than indefinitely, and the composition is revisited as the programme develops — a founding-phase committee is expected to broaden as the community grows.
Can one person sit on more than one committee?
Only where it does not let one person influence the same decision at two stages. Cross-membership between a body that makes decisions and the body that reviews those decisions is ruled out, and declared conflicts are managed under the conflict-of-interest policy item by item.
Keep going
Composition, tenure and independence
Committees are built to be hard to capture: defined competency requirements for seats, fixed renewable terms with staggering so memory and fresh eyes coexist, quoracy rules, and standing declarations of interest reviewed at every meeting.
Members act in the Institute’s public-interest role, not as delegates of employers or constituencies. Minutes record decisions and dissent; recusals are logged. Vacancies are published on the leadership page — capable people are invited to put themselves forward.