Transparency Builds Trust
In continuing education and training, trust is rarely built by a single policy, course evaluation, or credential. It is built through a pattern of organizational behavior—being clear about interests, responsible with the work of others, and transparent about the factors that may influence what learners see and hear.
That is why disclosure and intellectual property rights belong within the broader conversation about organization, responsibility & control in the IACET Standard. The Standard takes a systems approach to continuing education and training, placing responsibility for quality within the provider's organizational and management structure.
Disclosure: Giving Learners the Information They Need
Imagine attending a professional training session where the instructor strongly recommends a particular product. The presentation is convincing, the examples all point in the same direction, and the product appears to be the obvious solution.
Then, after the session, you discover that the instructor has a financial relationship with the company that makes it.
Does that automatically mean the information was inaccurate? No. But knowing about the relationship beforehand might have changed how you evaluated the recommendation.
That is the value of disclosure.
Disclosure is not necessarily about eliminating relationships or interests. It is about making them visible. With relevant information, learners can evaluate content with greater context and make their own informed judgments.
In that sense, transparency becomes part of quality assurance.
Intellectual Property: Quality Includes Respect for Ownership
The same principle of organizational responsibility applies to intellectual property.
Continuing education providers routinely work with presentations, photographs, videos, articles, diagrams, case studies, assessment questions, software, and other materials. Some may be created internally. Others may belong to instructors, contractors, publishers, clients, or other third parties.
The ease of finding and sharing digital content can sometimes obscure an important question: Do we actually have the right to use this?
A strong intellectual property policy therefore does more than protect an organization from potential legal problems. It establishes expectations for how people within the CE/T system develop, select, obtain, attribute, and use learning materials.
That distinction matters. Quality isn't limited to whether a course is instructionally sound. It also includes whether the organization has responsible systems behind that course.
From Individual Judgment to Organizational Practice
An instructor may know to disclose a relationship. An instructional designer may understand copyright. A program manager may carefully document permissions. But a quality system should not depend entirely on whether the right person remembers the right thing.
Policies establish organizational expectations. Processes make those expectations repeatable. Evidence demonstrates that the organization actually follows them.
IACET describes policies as establishing the principles for how an organization conducts its business, how personnel should conduct themselves, and what customers can expect. That is particularly relevant here. Disclosure and intellectual property policies tell learners, instructors, designers, partners, and other stakeholders something important about the organization itself: this is how we operate.
Transparency Is Part of the Quality Infrastructure
This connects to a larger idea running throughout the IACET Standard. Quality continuing education does not happen simply because talented instructors deliver good content. It requires an organizational system capable of producing quality consistently.
Disclosure and intellectual property rights may seem like relatively narrow requirements within that larger framework. In practice, they illustrate something much bigger.
Organizations build trust when they make relevant interests visible, respect content creators’ rights, establish clear expectations for personnel, and take responsibility for the learning experiences delivered under their name.
Transparency doesn't guarantee trust. But it gives trust something solid to stand on.
As IACET continues to revise the Standard for Continuing Education and Training, we invite providers, learners, regulators, employers, and other stakeholders to participate in the standards development process. IACET welcomes stakeholder input as part of its commitment to openness, transparency, and continuous improvement. Please visit https://iacet.org/standards/ce-t-standards-development-committee/ to stay informed.
About the Author
Sherard Jones is the President of Strategic Futurist Consulting, an organization whose mission is to provide global leadership in Credentialing, Accreditation and Standards Development. Sherard has over 15 years of experience with IACET Accreditation in various roles and is committed to applying his expertise to support IACET in meeting its strategic goals. Sherard is currently a Lead Assessor for the ANSI-CAP program, has worked as Vice President of Education and Training for IAPMO, and was a past Chair of the IACET Commission. Sherard has 10+ years of experience in strategic program development and has partnered with clients having business needs varying from creating international workforce development programs to build capacity through training and credentialing -- to creating and overseeing organizational restructuring plans.