The risk to Impartiality identification is one requirement of ISO 17025:2017 that is mandatory for implementation. The ease of implementation is achieved by having a system to follow, a 'procedure' to implement impartiality in laboratory activities.
To be impartial to the laboratory’s activities is to be free to exercise your judgment (professionally) and competency as per the actual data results that you have gathered using the established procedures
To understand more about Impartiality, I have included its definition from the standard. As per ISO 17025, clause 3.1 Impartiality means:
“The presence of objectivity.”
note to 3.1, stating that “Objectivity is understood to mean that conflicts of interest do not exist, or are resolved so as not to adversely influence the activities of the laboratory.”
are freedom from conflicts of interest,
freedom from bias
freedom from prejudice,
neutrality,
fairness,
open-mindedness,
even-handedness,
detachment
and balance
I have written a procedure entitled “Implementing Impartiality Procedure”.
The Basic Steps In Implementing Impartiality Procedure
1. Define the responsibilities. Determine who will be responsible for implementing, monitoring, and maintaining the records, including the one who will provide the resources needed.
2. Implementing the Impartiality Procedure, these are:
Commitment to Impartiality – commitment from higher management
Ensuring Impartiality to Laboratory Activities – implemented here are the structure to manage impartiality and the mechanisms to safeguard impartiality.
Identification of Risk to Impartiality – these are the implementations or processes to identify risks to impartiality such as internal audit, document review, and meetings.
Risk Assessment and Control- this is where evaluation and corrective actions are implemented.
Identification and Monitoring to an On-Going Basis – this included Regular Meeting or Internal Audit
You can read more about this topic as a guide in creating your own Impartiality procedure in this link >> 4 STEPS TO IMPLEMENT ISO 17025 IMPARTIALITY PROCEDURE
I have also created a “Complete and ready-made” procedure where I presented all the steps above with related forms and a spreadsheet. You can purchase it for a small fee at this link >> Impartiality Procedure