Guardian

A Guardian is a qualified professional authorized for bounded assessment functions where irreducible professional judgment remains. The title does not create universal authority, replace a specialist, cure deficient evidence, or make the certification decision.

Five separate governing responsibilities

DocumentResponsibility
Guardian Profession Standard v2.0Professional identity, lifecycle, anti-capture, continuing competence, discipline, records, and public claims.
Guardian Competence Coordinate System v2.0Five composable axes: Domain, Function, Competence Level, Evidence Class, and Modality. Source, jurisdiction, language, population, system, method, and risk limits remain in the authorization and engagement record.
Guardian Code of Professional Conduct v2.0Independence, integrity, conflicts, confidentiality, evidence discipline, affected-person duties, and record duties.
Guardian Calibration and Reliability Standard v2.0Calibration, inter-assessor reliability, disagreement, drift, uncertainty, and corrective action.
Guardian Assessment Practice Standard v2.0Planning, evidence, judgment, findings, limitations, communication, escalation, records, and handoff.

The documents remain separate so competence, conduct, reliability, practice, and professional identity cannot be collapsed into an opaque credential. See The Guardian Profession for the full public explanation.

Status boundary

Legacy tiers, fixed training pathways, informal title use, direct HVC issuance, or old sample registries do not establish current Guardian authority. Public reliance requires a competent authorization decision and a current coordinate-specific Registry record once production operation exists.