Public - Client - Colleague ​​​​Complaint

Introduction

The Institute of Certified Management Consultants of Alberta (ICMCA) is responsible for the initial certification and on-going assurance of competency of all Certified Management Consultants in Alberta.

As a self-regulating professional Institute, ICMCA ensures public and client safety with a responsibility to ensure the qualifications of those holding CMC and FCMC titles and protect against title misuse. In addition, we provide a process for clients or members of the public or colleague CMC’s that see or experience poor consulting practice from one of our registrants, to register a complaint. This then engages our institute to assess the incident and potentially exercise disciplinary and legal action to ensure the competence of ICMCA registrant-members. Although the Alberta government remains ultimately responsible for public safety and well-being, it entrusts this responsibility to professional self-regulatory Institutes such as ICMCA.

As the professional Institute we do the following to protect both clients and the public against poor and unethical conduct by those who are registered, certified members of our Institute:

1. Prior to certification, we ensure candidates hold the required pre-requisites and take the prescribed courses, provide the required customer project summaries, and pass the applicable examinations to attain their CMC designation. Our Certification Committee and Registrar ensure all candidates are assessed against the current competency requirements, and to both Canadian and international standards for certification. This also includes the attestation of every candidate to their compliance with our Universal Code of Conduct (including ethics).
2. Once certified, our CMC’s must annually re-attest to following the Code of Conduct, and also show evidence of achievement of minimum, ongoing continuous professional development actions as a means to maintaining their consulting capability, relevancy and competence.
3. In addition, the ICMCA has a Practice Review and Discipline Committee (PRDC) with the responsibility to annually conduct random, proactive competency-practice reviews of a sampling of our membership (~5%/yr) – which is similar in concept as to how the Canada Revenue Agency conducts random tax audits. This PRDC is also the group that will adjudicate in a quasi-judicial manner, any public, client or member complaint against a registered certified member of ICMCA. The PRDC conducts the complaint adjudication process according to procedures prescribed by the Alberta Professional and Occupational Association Registration Act (POARA) and the specifics of the POARA- ICMCA Regulation 166/2005.

Confidentiality of Process:

It is important to realize that in filing a complaint, the complainant is initiating a professional conduct review. According to the POAR Act there are 2 stages to our handling of the complaint:

Stage 1 – Assessment of Complaint