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Dear Ahmed Rashidi Abdo,

Thank you for sharing this information which the editing of the new ISO 001:2026 for September 16, 2026.

It is better to wait for the final version of this standard to share our comments on the main changes that we discussed during last year on this forum.

Best Regards!

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Marc Kanho
Senior QMS Lead Auditor and Consultant
K-Marc Canada
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Ahmed, my guess is that the greatest practical impact will not come from whichever new clause gets the most attention. It will come from the volume of small wording changes rippling through manuals, procedures and internal audit checklists that were all built around the 2015 numbering. Organisations that treat the transition as a document rewrite tend to spend the entire period on paperwork and change nothing about how the system actually runs.

For auditors I think the harder shift is competence rather than knowledge. Reading the new text takes a weekend, but auditing a requirement well takes much longer, because you need to have seen what good and poor look like in a few different organisations before your questions get sharp. Marc has a fair point about waiting for the published version, and the useful preparation before then is being honest about which parts of the current system are already weak, since those are the ones that will struggle under any revision.

Ahmed, my guess is that the greatest practical impact will not come from whichever new clause gets the most attention. It will come from the volume of small wording changes rippling through manuals, procedures and internal audit checklists that were all built around the 2015 numbering. Organisations that treat the transition as a document rewrite tend to spend the entire period on paperwork and change nothing about how the system actually runs.

For auditors I think the harder shift is competence rather than knowledge. Reading the new text takes a weekend, but auditing a requirement well takes much longer, because you need to have seen what good and poor look like in a few different organisations before your questions get sharp. Marc has a fair point about waiting for the published version, and the useful preparation before then is being honest about which parts of the current system are already weak, since those are the ones that will struggle under any revision.

Dear Dilawar,

Thank you for sharing such a thoughtful perspective.

I particularly appreciate your distinction between knowledge and competence. Reading and understanding a revised standard is one thing, but being able to evaluate how its requirements are effectively implemented across different organizational contexts is quite another.

I also agree that one of the risks during transition is treating the revision primarily as a documentation exercise. Updating manuals, procedures, and audit checklists may be necessary, but it should not become the objective of the transition itself. The greater value should come from examining whether the changes actually strengthen the effectiveness of the QMS and improve how it operates in practice.

Your point about identifying existing weaknesses before the final publication is especially relevant. Rather than trying to predict every detail of the final standard, organizations can already use this period to critically evaluate the effectiveness and maturity of their current QMS and identify areas where practice may not fully reflect the intended outcomes.

From an auditor's perspective, this also raises an important question: Will the transition to ISO 9001:2026 require more than simply learning the revised requirements, and place greater emphasis on auditor competence, judgment, and the ability to evaluate system effectiveness?

I believe this will be an interesting area for the quality community to explore as we move closer to publication.

Thank you again for adding such a valuable practical perspective to the discussion.

Ahmed, my guess is that the greatest practical impact will not come from whichever new clause gets the most attention. It will come from the volume of small wording changes rippling through manuals, procedures and internal audit checklists that were all built around the 2015 numbering. Organisations that treat the transition as a document rewrite tend to spend the entire period on paperwork and change nothing about how the system actually runs.

For auditors I think the harder shift is competence rather than knowledge. Reading the new text takes a weekend, but auditing a requirement well takes much longer, because you need to have seen what good and poor look like in a few different organisations before your questions get sharp. Marc has a fair point about waiting for the published version, and the useful preparation before then is being honest about which parts of the current system are already weak, since those are the ones that will struggle under any revision.

Ahmed, I think it will, though not because the new text asks anything of auditors that was not already expected. The competence gap exists under 2015 as well. A revision just exposes it, because when the wording is unfamiliar an auditor without depth has nothing to fall back on except reading the clause aloud and asking whether there is a procedure for it.

What I would watch is how transition training gets handled. If it is a half day briefing on what changed, we end up with auditors who know the new numbering and still cannot tell an effective process from a well documented one. Sitting alongside someone who reads a system well does more for judgment than any course, including the ones I run myself.

Dear Dilawar,

Thank you for sharing such a thoughtful perspective.

I particularly appreciate your distinction between knowledge and competence. Reading and understanding a revised standard is one thing, but being able to evaluate how its requirements are effectively implemented across different organizational contexts is quite another.

I also agree that one of the risks during transition is treating the revision primarily as a documentation exercise. Updating manuals, procedures, and audit checklists may be necessary, but it should not become the objective of the transition itself. The greater value should come from examining whether the changes actually strengthen the effectiveness of the QMS and improve how it operates in practice.

Your point about identifying existing weaknesses before the final publication is especially relevant. Rather than trying to predict every detail of the final standard, organizations can already use this period to critically evaluate the effectiveness and maturity of their current QMS and identify areas where practice may not fully reflect the intended outcomes.

From an auditor's perspective, this also raises an important question: Will the transition to ISO 9001:2026 require more than simply learning the revised requirements, and place greater emphasis on auditor competence, judgment, and the ability to evaluate system effectiveness?

I believe this will be an interesting area for the quality community to explore as we move closer to publication.

Thank you again for adding such a valuable practical perspective to the discussion.

Ahmed, my guess is that the greatest practical impact will not come from whichever new clause gets the most attention. It will come from the volume of small wording changes rippling through manuals, procedures and internal audit checklists that were all built around the 2015 numbering. Organisations that treat the transition as a document rewrite tend to spend the entire period on paperwork and change nothing about how the system actually runs.

For auditors I think the harder shift is competence rather than knowledge. Reading the new text takes a weekend, but auditing a requirement well takes much longer, because you need to have seen what good and poor look like in a few different organisations before your questions get sharp. Marc has a fair point about waiting for the published version, and the useful preparation before then is being honest about which parts of the current system are already weak, since those are the ones that will struggle under any revision.