← All insights

Independence

Should your CPD accreditor also sell courses?

Published 21 August 2026 · 6 min read

Here's a question worth asking before you pay anyone to accredit your training: does this body also sell courses of its own? It's rarely on the shortlist of things providers check, and it should be near the top.

The conflict nobody names

The UK CPD market is unregulated. There is no statutory body checking whether an accreditor's own commercial interests stay separate from its assessment decisions — that separation, where it exists, is a choice each body makes for itself. Several of the best-known names in UK CPD accreditation also run training businesses: course catalogues, webinars, certification products that sit alongside the accreditation service and sell into the same market as the providers being assessed.

That isn't illegal, and it isn't automatically dishonest. But it is a structural conflict of interest, and structural conflicts don't need bad intent to cause harm. A body that both accredits and sells training has a commercial reason to prefer outcomes that favour its own catalogue — whether that shows up as a stricter bar for competitors, a friendlier one for its own content, or simply a habit of steering undecided providers toward buying rather than building. You, as the provider being assessed, have no way to see which of those is happening behind a closed review.

Why this is different from most conflicts of interest

Most professional conflicts get managed with disclosure: an assessor declares an interest, a second reviewer signs off, a firewall gets built between departments. Managing this one is harder, because the conflict sits at the level of the business model, not the individual reviewer. A named assessor can be entirely fair and the structural incentive still exists above them, in what the body chooses to build, price, and promote.

That's why independence isn't really a claim a body can make about itself convincingly. It's a fact about how the business is built — whether it has a commercial reason to prefer one outcome over another — and it's checkable before you ever apply.

The four questions that actually check for it

Before you send anyone a fee, these four questions do more work than reading the "About us" page:

1. Does the body sell or publish training content? If the answer is yes, ask how assessment is kept separate from the sales side — and whether that separation is described anywhere in writing, or just asserted.
2. Is the assessment framework published in full? If you can't read the standard you're being measured against before you apply, you can't check whether it's applied consistently between an outside provider and the body's own material.
3. Is a named person accountable for the decision? An anonymous panel is harder to hold to a standard than an assessor whose name is on the outcome.
4. Can certificates be verified independently? A body confident in its own rigour makes it easy for anyone — an employer, a learner, a regulator — to check a certificate is genuine without phoning the body itself.

A body that answers all four cleanly has nothing to hide. One that answers "we don't compete with our providers" but can't otherwise explain how is worth a second look.

Why we built AssuredCPD this way

We sell the accreditation mark. That's the whole business. We do not produce, publish, license, or sell training content in any form, in any market, so there is no scenario in which a course we're assessing is also a course we'd rather sell instead. The Standards Framework we assess against is published in full, every accreditation is reviewed by a named assessor, and every certificate carries a code anyone can check on the verification page in seconds.

We didn't design it this way because independence sounds good in a pitch. We designed it this way because it's the only structure where "we sell the mark, never the courses" is actually true rather than aspirational — and it's the one claim in this market that a body with a training catalogue of its own cannot make back.

What this means for you, practically

It doesn't mean every accreditor that also sells courses is acting in bad faith. Many run genuinely careful assessment processes. What it means is that the burden of checking sits with you, the provider, because the market itself won't check it for you. Ask the four questions above of anyone you're considering — including us. The answers tell you more about what you're actually buying than any amount of marketing copy.

FAQ

Why does it matter if a CPD accreditor also sells courses?

If an accreditor sells its own training, it is judging providers who compete with that training. A course it rejects clears the way for its own catalogue, and a course it approves may face competition from the very body reviewing it. That conflict does not have to be acted on to matter — its existence is enough to weaken trust in the decision.

Is it illegal for a CPD accreditor to sell courses?

No. The UK CPD market is unregulated, so there is no rule against an accreditation body also running a training business. It is a business-model choice, not a legal one, which is why the burden falls on providers to ask the question themselves before choosing a body.

How do I check if a CPD body is independent?

Ask directly whether the body sells or publishes its own courses, check whether its assessment framework is published in full, look for named assessors rather than an anonymous panel, and confirm certificates can be verified independently online. A body confident in its independence will answer all four without hesitation.

Does AssuredCPD sell courses?

No. AssuredCPD sells the accreditation mark only and does not produce, publish, or sell training content of any kind, so it never competes with the providers it assesses.

Apply for accreditation   Read the Standards Framework