Ethics, Transparency and Accountability in Quality Practice
This domain tests conduct: how quality work is carried out, reported and defended. EAQE items put you inside a panel, a quality office or an appeals process and ask what a principled practitioner does when evidence, reputation and confidentiality pull in different directions.
Core rules
- Core principles. Integrity, objectivity, impartiality, confidentiality, competence, and respect for participants. Independence of external QA agencies (ESG 3.2) and professional conduct of reviewers (2.4) are structural safeguards, not personal virtues alone.
- Conflict of interest. Declare financial, institutional, familial, research-collaboration and recent-employment relationships; recuse where a reasonable observer would doubt objectivity. A signed declaration is a starting point, not the end of the duty.
- Confidentiality is bounded. It protects personal data and commercially sensitive information; it does not justify suppressing adverse findings. Reports must be published in a form that is clear and accessible (ESG 2.6; public information, 1.8).
- Data protection and consent. Student-level data need lawful basis, minimisation and anonymisation in reports; aggregate small groups so individuals are not identifiable; inform respondents how data will be used.
- Right of reply and factual accuracy. Those judged must see findings and correct factual errors before publication; this protects accuracy, not reputation.
- Complaints and appeals. Separate, published routes for institutions (ESG 2.7) and for agencies (3.7), with defined grounds, timelines and decision-makers not involved in the original decision.
- Accountability. Decisions must be traceable to criteria and evidence; quality work is public reasoning. Teaching staff must be judged fairly, with evidence they can see and answer.
- Honesty about limits. State what the evidence cannot show, disclose methodological limitations, and do not let a report's tone be edited to soften findings.
Worked example
A peer reviewer is assigned to evaluate an institution where, two years earlier, she was head of the department under review, and she co-authored a paper with the vice-chancellor last year. Reasoning: both relationships create a reasonable apprehension of bias. The correct action is not to "stay objective" silently but to declare both facts to the panel chair and secretariat at the earliest opportunity, and to recuse from the department's sessions and from drafting its findings. The declaration is recorded; the agency replaces or reassigns her; the report notes that the affected sections were considered without her. If the conflict had been discovered after the visit, the same declaration applies, and the agency should assess whether any finding depended materially on her input. Transparency protects the institution and the reviewer alike.
Traps that cost marks
- Using confidentiality to conceal adverse findings or to deter complainants.
- Treating a tick-box conflict declaration as the whole duty; late-discovered conflicts also require disclosure.
- Publishing only successful outcomes, producing reputation management rather than accountability.
- Reporting identifiable data from small cohorts.
- Editing a panel's findings after the fact without disclosing the change.
- Conflating appeals (procedural or factual error) with disagreement about judgement.