Independence Covenant
What it is
The Independence Covenant is the public statement of how the CMDash auditor and assessor
directory stays neutral. It is published at /independence on the CMDash website.
The page states only facts that are true of the code today, each tied to its source. Treat it as a description of how the directory behaves, not as a contract.
When to use it
Read it when you are choosing an auditor or assessor from the directory, or when a procurement or legal reviewer asks how the directory stays neutral.
Before you start
Nothing is needed to read the public page. The page is a draft: treat it as a description of how the directory behaves today, not as a contract.
How to
Open /independence on the CMDash website, or check the directory yourself. These facts hold today:
- No pay-to-rank field exists. The data model behind a directory listing has no fee, price, sponsor, rank, priority, boost or "featured" field.
- Listings are always alphabetical. The signed-in directory browse and the public directory read both sort strictly by firm name, ascending.
- Listing is opt-in. A firm's profile is not shown until the firm turns listing on.
- No client roster is exposed. A listing carries the firm's own public profile fields only. It is never joined to which organizations a firm currently serves.
An automated test runs on every change and fails the build if the data model grows a pay-to-rank-type field, or the listing stops sorting deterministically by firm name.
Common questions
What does it not say?
It does not describe every rule an auditor relationship is subject to; see the Terms of Service for those. It does not promise anything the code does not do today, and it makes no commitment about audit resale, bundling or referral fees, because those terms have not been drafted.