The Practice Shelf
The artifacts the job runs on.
If you have done this work for years, you do not need another framework poster. You need the one-page artifacts that survive contact with a deadline: the memo, the note, the log. These are ours, free, developed independently, and matched to the evidence the gap report asks for. Copy them, adapt them, file them where they cannot quietly vanish.
Here’s the honest reason this shelf exists, beyond the standard. You’re deep in the task, day after day, and a quick note catches what routine would otherwise dull. A credential only captures one day. A decision log kept for two years is the most convincing document in this field.
Area 01 · RightsThe proportionality note the four-part test, actually run
The feature, in one line.
The legitimate aim it serves, and whose aim it is.
Necessity: the less intrusive designs considered, and why each was or was not enough. If none were considered, that is your first finding.
The intrusion: which right, whose, how deep, for how long.
The balance, struck in writing, with the losing side’s cost stated fairly.
Verdict and conditions: proceed, proceed-if, or do not. Date and sign.
Download the fillable PDF ↓Area 02 · GovernanceThe lawful-versus-right memo for the day legal sign-off ends the conversation early
The decision, in one line.
What the law requires, cited. What legal sign-off concluded, quoted.
The concern that remains after the law is satisfied, stated concretely and without the word “ethics”. Who is affected, how, and how you know.
What you propose doing about the remainder, and what it costs.
Lawful and right are different questions. This memo exists to stop them being quietly merged.
Download the fillable PDF ↓Area 03 · LifecycleThe impact assessment skeleton the one-page version you will actually complete
Scope: the system, its purpose, its users, its subjects. Subjects and users are rarely the same people.
Stakeholders: who gains, who carries the risk, who was asked.
Rights touched: listed specifically, with severity and likelihood for each.
Mitigations: what reduces each risk, who owns it, by when.
Residual risk: what remains after mitigation, accepted by a named person, in writing.
Sign-off and review date. An assessment nobody signs is a compliance artifact, not a safeguard.
Download the fillable PDF ↓Quick lensThe five-question gut check thirty seconds, before the full paperwork
Who benefits from this system, specifically, not just “the business”?
Who is harmed, or carries the downside if it is wrong?
Who decided to build or deploy it, and were the people in the first two questions anywhere near the room?
Who can challenge it if it gets them wrong, and does that path actually work, or just exist on a slide?
At what scale: one bad call, or one bad pattern repeated against everyone the system touches?
Five questions, not a form. If one of them stalls you, that is the finding, and it is where the fuller artifacts on this shelf earn their keep.
Download the fillable PDF ↓Area 03 · LifecycleLifecycle checkpoints where ethics goes so it cannot be skipped
Design: the rights and proportionality questions, asked before budget locks. A checkpoint after the money is committed is decoration.
Procurement: what the vendor must show, not say. “The vendor says it’s fine” is day five of Five Objections for a reason.
Pre-launch: the impact assessment above, signed with a name.
Live: who watches the system, what metric triggers review, and who can pull the cord.
Retirement: what happens to the data, the decisions, and the people affected by them when the system is switched off.
Download the fillable PDF ↓Area 04 · JudgementThe decision log entry five lines, kept every time, worth more than any certificate
Date. Decision. Options weighed.
What each option would cost, and to whom. Including the option you took.
What was traded away, named plainly. Every real decision trades something.
Who made the call. Not who was in the room; who decided.
Review date. A decision without one is a decision nobody has to defend.
Download the fillable PDF ↓Area 04 · JudgementThe angles worksheet six honest questions before you commit, in no particular order
Legal: is it against the law? Being inside the law is not itself a reason to proceed, only the absence of a reason to stop.
Identity: does it sit with the values this organisation claims in public? If you would not want it said out loud at the next town hall, that is information.
Moral: setting the organisation aside, is it right? Strip away the job title and ask what you would tell a friend to do.
Reputation: could you defend this decision, face to face, to the specific people it affects, not to a headline, but to them? If the honest answer is no, that is the finding.
Cost: what does each option actually cost, in money, time, or people, and who carries it?
Overall: could you defend the choice, all five angles together, to the person it affects most? If one angle overrides the rest without a stated reason, write the reason down.
Download the fillable PDF ↓Area 05 · IndependenceThe objection memo the one you write on the day you say no
The system, in one line.
The decision being taken, by whom, by when.
The finding: what you found and how you found it, stated so a stranger could re-check it.
Who it touches: the people affected, and the specific right or duty in play. Name the article, not the vibe.
The options, each with its real cost, including the cost of proceeding.
Your recommendation, in one sentence a board member could repeat.
Escalation: who hears this if it is overruled, and by what channel.
Date it. Sign it. File it somewhere deletion would be noticed. If you are overruled, this memo is the difference between an objection and a feeling.
Download the fillable PDF ↓Already senior? The honest read on certificates
What a mark adds when you already have the experience
Market recognition, mostly in procurement and hiring filters. It doesn’t add competence you have, and employers increasingly know the difference. Your artifacts, kept over years, are the stronger signal; a mark is a shorthand for people who will never read them.
Which ones make sense, today
If your work touches corporate governance, the AIGP buys recognition where compliance people gather. If you assess systems, CertifAIEd’s criteria are respectable. If someone offers to certify you against EN 18274 this year, wait: the accredited scheme doesn’t exist yet, and when it does, we’ll say so, dated. Use the map’s compare tool before any of it.
The habit that outlasts every scheme
Keep the artifacts. Whatever scheme eventually arrives will want evidence of practice, recertification will want it again, and the talent desk runs on it now. A decision log kept for two years is the most convincing document in this field.
Where do you actually stand?
Sixteen questions, six minutes. You rate yourself on each competence area, from “not yet” to “I could evidence this to an assessor”. We hand back a profile, your strongest ground, and the gaps worth closing first. Nothing is stored unless you ask us to send it.