ISO/IEC 17024:2026: Beginner Auditor Course

Course description

This course covers the standard for bodies that certify people — welders, inspectors, project managers, drone pilots, auditors themselves. It is based on the third edition, published in March 2026, which replaced the 2012 version and introduced explicit requirements for the use of artificial intelligence in certification activities together with strengthened provisions for remote examinations. You will learn how a certification scheme is designed from a job and task analysis, how examinations are made valid, reliable and fair, how exam security is protected, and how the impartiality firewall between training and certification works.

Learning outcomes

On completion, learners will be able to:

1. Distinguish certification of persons from management system certification, product certification and training certificates, and place ISO/IEC 17024 within the ISO/IEC 17000 family.
2. Explain the principles of Annex A and the general requirements of Clause 4, including legal responsibility, responsibility for certification decisions, management of impartiality and financial soundness.
3. Apply the structural requirements of Clause 5, in particular the rule that certification must never be conditional on the body’s own training, and describe how the training and certification functions must be separated.
4. Evaluate the resource requirements of Clause 6: competence criteria for examiners and invigilators, conflict-of-interest rules, outsourcing under enforceable agreements, and the new requirements governing artificial intelligence — validity, reliability, fairness, transparency, human oversight and expert validation.
5. Determine record-keeping obligations, distinguish public from confidential information, and design examination security controls including responses to exam leaks (Clause 7).
6. Build the elements of a certification scheme from a job and task analysis: scope, job and task description, required competence, prerequisites, code of conduct, assessment methods and recertification criteria (Clause 8).
7. Trace the candidate journey through application, assessment, examination, independent decision, certification, surveillance and recertification, and handle suspension, withdrawal, appeals and complaints correctly (Clause 9).
8. Describe the management system requirements of Clause 10, including internal audit, management review, corrective action with root cause analysis, and risk-based thinking, then map a personal route to becoming an auditor.