Conceptualizing Bias
Annex A is informative. It explains how bias is understood, how it is categorized and how the profile fits the life cycle.
This annex is informative. It explains and illustrates; it does not create a requirement. A finding cannot rest on it alone. The normative clauses are 4 to 9.
What annex A asks
The first annex is guidance. It looks at how bias in a system and bias in people are understood, at ways of grouping biases, at the place of the profile in the life of a system, at the questions that follow and at what the team should do. It sets no requirement. Its job is to give a team a shared way of talking about bias before the clauses are applied.
Why it matters
The annex is useful precisely because the normative clauses are compact. A team that disagrees about what counts as bias will struggle in clause 4, and the annex gives it a vocabulary and a set of distinctions. The annex is also a trap for a careless reader: because it is informative, a finding cannot rest on it alone. It can explain a clause, but it cannot add an obligation.
What good looks like
Read Annex A in the clause 4 workshop, not as a separate training session. Use its categories to test whether the team's list of biases is complete, then record which categories are relevant to this system. Cite the normative clause, not the annex, in the requirement and the evidence. Where the annex suggests a practice the team adopts, label it as the team's choice.
Evidence an assessor asks for
An assessor will not accept Annex A as the source of a requirement. The team should be able to say which clause the practice supports.
- Bias category list The categories the team considered and the ones relevant to this system
- Workshop record The shared model agreed in the clause 4 workshop
- Normative map Each practice traced to a normative clause or labelled as a team choice
- Team glossary The bias terms as the team will use them
Where it commonly fails
- A finding cites Annex A with no normative clause
- The team treats the annex as a checklist
- The categories are copied without a relevance decision
What to do before publication
Use the annex to think, and the normative clauses to require. Keep the two labels visible.
Read across
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