The accountability framework landscape can seem bewildering. The Core Humanitarian Standard. Sphere. PSEA commitments. ISO 9001. The Grand Bargain transparency workstream. UNICEF's Core Commitments for Children. The HAP Standard. Each claims to address humanitarian quality — and each asks something different of organisations.
So how should an organisation choose? Here are five questions that can help.
1. What Are Your Donors Requiring?
The most pragmatic starting point is what your institutional donors actually require. DG ECHO requires an ex-ante assessment or accepts CHS Certification as a partial substitute. FCDO now recognises CHS Certification for due diligence purposes. Some donors require PSEA compliance frameworks separately.
Mapping your current and target donors against their quality requirements tells you which frameworks deliver direct compliance value — and where you might achieve efficiencies by pursuing a standard that satisfies multiple donors simultaneously.
2. What Does the Framework Actually Ask You to Change?
Some frameworks are primarily documentation-focused: they ask you to have the right policies in place. Others are practice-focused: they ask you to demonstrate that your systems work in the field. The CHS sits firmly in the second category — which is both its strength and its challenge.
Before committing to any framework, map its requirements against your current organisational reality. Where are the gaps? Are those gaps in systems, policies, culture, or resources? The framework you choose should target your actual weaknesses, not just produce documentation of your existing strengths.
3. What Verification Do You Need?
Self-assessment against a framework has limited credibility with donors, partners, and affected communities. Independent external verification carries far more weight. But external verification comes with costs — financial and organisational.
Consider whether the framework you are considering has a credible independent verification pathway. The CHS does — HQAI. Sphere can be assessed as part of a CHS audit through the CHS+ mechanism. PSEA has no equivalent independent audit pathway, which limits its external credibility.
4. Can Frameworks Be Combined?
Yes — and this is increasingly how organisations approach the landscape. The CHS+ service from HQAI specifically addresses this: one audit, multiple standards. An organisation can achieve CHS Certification and have their Sphere alignment assessed in a single audit process, eliminating duplicate assessment costs and fatigue.
The key to effective framework combination is ensuring the frameworks genuinely overlap — that meeting the requirements of one actually advances compliance with another. The CHS and Sphere share significant common ground. The CHS and ISO 9001 have less overlap but can be complementary at the management systems level.
5. Are You Ready for Public Transparency?
HQAI publishes all audit reports — including the findings that did not go well. If your organisation is not ready for external scrutiny of your accountability gaps to be publicly visible, that is important information. Not a reason to avoid the CHS — but a signal that internal preparation work is needed first.
The willingness to be publicly accountable is itself a quality indicator. Organisations that approach HQAI audits with the attitude of "we want an honest external picture, even if it's uncomfortable" consistently achieve better outcomes than those approaching it as a compliance box to tick.