Standards bodies should publish clear funding principles and due diligence policies setting out the basis on which funding is accepted. Funding sources, amounts, and any associated conditions should be disclosed regularly and made publicly accessible.

Clarity about who is at the table and in what capacity is a basic condition of legitimate governance. Standards bodies should publish clear definitions of their stakeholder categories for governance purposes, distinguishing at a minimum between the companies whose activities the standard is designed to govern, civil society, affected communities, and independent experts. Definitions should be drawn with sufficient precision to prevent misrepresentation of governance balance; overly broad groupings or categories left without robust criteria risk obscuring the true weight of commercial interests.

Standards bodies should maintain mechanisms to prevent any single interest group from exerting disproportionate influence over governance or standard-setting processes. The principle that no one interest should dominate should be publicly stated and regularly reported on. Representatives should therefore be chosen through transparent, open selection processes with clear lines of accountability and without industry involvement in selecting non-industry representatives. Representatives should be demonstrably accountable to, and reflective of the views of, the stakeholder or rightsholder group they represent. Standard bodies should establish formal accountability mechanisms for resolving conflicts that implicate the standards body itself.

Consultation processes should be genuinely accessible: clearly signposted, available in formats that do not systematically disadvantage less well-resourced stakeholders, and with timelines that allow for meaningful participation. Standards bodies should recognise that participants may face significant differences in resources and capacity. They should take active steps to help offset these differences, ensuring the independence of participants so that participation is meaningful in practice.

Standards bodies should be able to demonstrate how stakeholder input has been received, assessed, and addressed at each stage of a standard-setting process, including where feedback has not been incorporated and why. There should also be a clear, accessible complaints process with published handling procedures.

The criteria by which different inputs are weighed, including technical feasibility and coherence with related frameworks, should be clearly articulated and publicly available. Stakeholders should not have to guess at the rationale behind significant decisions.

Certain foundations are not matters of stakeholder preference. Where standards address climate change and decarbonisation, decision-making must be grounded in the best available scientific evidence; where they touch on human rights, they must align with international human rights law. Consultation processes should not become venues for relitigating these foundations, and the majority preference among participants should not override them.

Standards bodies should maintain robust, publicly available conflict-of-interest policies covering declarations, registrations, escalations, and enforcement. Registers of interests for governance and technical body members should be publicly accessible and kept up to date. Policies should also address personnel movement between standards bodies and the industries they regulate, including appropriate cooling-off periods and clear consequences for violations.

Auditors and assessors should be independent of the entities they assess, with public conflict-of-interest safeguards, including restrictions on providing paid services to assessed entities. Assessments should draw on input from workers, affected communities, and other informed stakeholders, not solely on information the entity supplies. Audit outcomes, including the basis for certification decisions, should be transparent, with accessible mechanisms to appeal decisions or challenge assessor conduct.