Page 77 - Part-A

Information, Advice or Guidance

Maintaining impartiality

As you have already learnt, impartiality entails the ‘equal treatment of all rivals or
disputants’. However, it also entails the equal treatment of clients and customers.
Therefore, impartiality in service delivery is vitally important when giving advice,
information or guidance, as it shows that the principles of equality, discussed in Unit 2
and Section 3, are being correctly followed. If these principles are not being followed,
and priority or special treatment is given to a certain group – e.g. European clients –
then impartiality in service delivery is not being achieved.

For example, if an advisor gives advice to a client, the advice given should be based
on the client’s needs and circumstances, not on how the advisor feels about the client
as a person. If the advisor allows their personal viewpoint to cloud the advice that they
give, then they are failing to maintain impartiality in service delivery. Companies such
as CREST, mentioned previously, maintain impartiality in service delivery by having
executives ‘oversee and regularly evaluate all aspects of business activity to ensure
all operations are carried out responsibly, openly, independently and objectively’.
Furthermore, these executives will discuss, ‘identify and analyse the possibilities of
conflicts of interest arising from its relationships’, and work to make sure that service
delivery impartiality is maintained.

If you’d like to look at how CREST maintain impartiality in more detail, refer to the link
below.

Source: https://www.crest-approved.org/wp-content/uploads/Policy_
ImpartialityConflictOfInterest-v3.pdf

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