UNI 11871 certification for law and accounting firms: what guarantees of credibility of the path?
The quality certification for law firms and accountants, based on the UNI 11871 standard, is the first set of rules for the organization and management of the activities of law firms and accountants to be formalized in Europe. The in-depth analysis by Stefano Aldini of SZA Studio Legale
The UNI 11871 standard for the certification of law firms and accountants is certainly a clear and understandable document, even for those who are not particularly familiar with the world of "quality certifications" and its language.
This is a voluntary standard created specifically for law and accounting firms, where to date traditional management system certifications (primarily ISO 9001 on quality management systems) have not had much success. There are several reasons given to explain the limited diffusion of ISO 9001 certification within law firms and accountants: a natural distrust of the professional in sharing information regarding the performance of his activity with external parties, the personal nature of the professional assignment which is more difficult to adapt to being regulated by procedures, the complexity of the documentary and formal requirements required.
The UNI 11871 standard was created with the worthy objective of addressing these impediments and thus encouraging a wider diffusion of the certification of law firms and accountants. However, the intent of simplification must not lead those approaching this new rule to focus attention exclusively on the "certification" of the law firm without considering the most relevant aspect of the adoption and maintenance of an efficient organization and management model according to the requirements of UNI 11871. This approach, which is partly justifiable, however deserves clarification, not only of a technical and terminological nature. Certification represents the last step of a path that starts from a conscious, motivated and demanding choice on the part of the "management" of the firm or the professional. This decision should lead to the adoption of directives aimed at optimizing and increasingly improving the organization and management of the firm according to the "technical" parameters defined by the UNI 11871 standard.
It is then necessary to give concrete and effective implementation to these directives so that they do not overlap with the ordinary execution and management of the firm's activities (or worse, that they remain totally detached from them) but that they become an integral part of the way of working and are taken into account. consideration to guide strategic development choices and to address the various risks to which the professional reality is exposed. Certification certainly represents a fundamental step in order to communicate externally the results achieved through the adoption of the "method" envisaged by the UNI 11871 standard. We therefore understand the attention dedicated to the documents and evidence to be shown to the certifier in audit venue as well as the concern to minimize the impact deriving from the formal tasks required by the standard.
However, it must be kept in mind that the formal elements do not represent the main objective of the certification process: what matters instead are the directives, behaviors and work criteria followed and applied daily by the firm to effectively achieve the expected improvement objectives both in relations with its customers and within the organization. This is the substantial approach that the standard asks to be adopted where excessive attention to formal aspects (the evidence to be provided to the certifier, the mandatory or non-obligatory nature to be recognized to a document according to the requirements of the standard, the number and extent of records required to certify the performance of a given activity or control, etc.), in addition to not bringing any benefit to the ability to manage risks and increase the value of the firm, it ends up compromising and debasing the meaning of the certification itself. That said, we are fully aware of the difficulties and costs, including of an organizational nature, entailed in the choice to adopt a system to be certified in compliance with UNI 11871.
It is therefore a good idea to make available to the firms interested in certification any tool, information or practical support that can serve to make this process easier and more understandable, including the dissemination of clear interpretative guidelines for the assessment of conformity with the standard by the certifier (the very recent UNI/PdR 146:2023 with operational guidelines for the assessment of conformity with UNI 11871:2022 responds precisely to this last purpose). According to the UNI 11871 standard there is information that must be documented. And in some cases it would even be illogical if such information were not documented.
For example, how to communicate and disseminate undocumented firm policies? Or again, how to certify the carrying out of controls (for example on mandatory requirements or on the level of customer satisfaction) at the set deadlines or with the established methods in the absence of the relevant registrations? Outside of the cases foreseen by the law, the principle according to which it is the Firm's responsibility to decide which information to document or record and to define their level of detail and in-depth) remains unchanged according to the size, complexity and context of reference and in light of an evaluation of the negative (or positive) effects that the possible lack (or presence) of documented information could have on the effectiveness of the firm's organizational and management system.
The Firm's system of procedures, records and other documented information must be created and implemented not only to satisfy the one-off conformity assessment by the certifier but above all to support the functioning of the Firm and improve the ability to respond to the requirements of the standard and to those of customers. In many cases it will not even be necessary to prepare procedures or other ad hoc documentation in view of certification because the firm already has management tools or applications capable of satisfying the requirements of the UNI 11871 standard. Think, for example, of software or platforms for management of client records or firm practices. In these circumstances, the choice to create additional documents (paper or electronic) for the sole purpose of meeting the certifier's expectations appears even more inappropriate as well as useless.
When planning the UNI 11871 system, the firm will instead have to analyze its processes and activities to understand whether there are already organizational and management elements, including of a documentary nature, capable of responding to the requirements of the standard according to an approach based on risk control. . The certifier will also adopt the same approach for the evaluation of these elements, avoiding requests for formalities or obligations that duplicate or overlap unnecessarily with what is already effectively applied by the Firm in the ordinary management of its activities.
With these objectives clearly in sight, the organizational and management model envisaged by the UNI 11871 standard may entail some initial adjustment difficulties but in a longer-term perspective it will allow the firm to effectively achieve its objectives and maintain them over time, reassuring its clients and the interested parties on the credibility and seriousness of what is attested by the certification obtained.
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/economia/certificazione-uni-11871-per-gli-studi-legali-e-commercialisti-quali-garanzie-di-credibilita-del-percorso/ on Sat, 16 Sep 2023 05:03:36 +0000.