Running an RTO means making decisions that affect your people, your students and the quality of your training. RTO Superhero helps you turn those decisions into practical action.
Join Angela Connell-Richards each Wednesday as she breaks down the Standards for RTOs 2025 and explores what strong governance, quality training and continuous improvement look like in everyday practice.
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Explore assessment quality, trainer evidence, student support, leadership, risk and the systems that connect it all. You’ll finish each episode with a focused action to help strengthen your RTO, not just another task on your list.
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Fit and proper used to feel like a form you signed, filed, and forgot. Under the 2025 Standards, that mindset becomes a liability because the expectation is continuous assurance: we’re meant to actively and continuously confirm our governing persons remain fit and proper, and we need to be able to prove the monitoring is real.
I walk through what the standards actually say, grounded in Schedule 1, and why the regulator’s lens is broader than the typical declaration checklist. We talk through the kinds of changes that can happen mid-term, why they matter even when they sit outside the training sector, and how “nothing has come up” is not the same as “we have a system that would pick it up”.
Then I get practical: the three pieces of governance architecture that make this workable without turning it into an investigation. We install a standing disclosure obligation in writing, run a lightweight annual due diligence cycle, and maintain a fit and proper register as a controlled document that becomes governance-grade evidence. I also call out the biggest gaps I see in RTO compliance, including third-party delivery arrangements where contracting out does not contract away accountability.
If you want a clear plan for what to review this quarter and how to avoid the common implementation mistakes, this is your roadmap. Subscribe, share it with your governance team, and leave a review if it helps, what’s the one part of your current fit and proper process you’d most like to tighten up?
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Episode forty five Fit and Proper Continuously What the 2025 Standards Now Require. For the last three weeks I have been walking through scenario based episodes, live governance events, a scope expansion offer, an ASQA complaint, a validation finding, a governing person resignation. Today I want to shift gear. This week begins a short series anchored directly against the 2025 standards. Episodes that don't just reference the standards but sit against specific obligations and walk through what operationalizing those obligations actually looks like. And there is no better place to start than
with the fit and proper person requirements. Because this is an area where almost every RTO I work with has a gap. Not a deliberate gap, a historical one. Under the previous standards, fit and proper was effectively a point-in-time check, done at registration, done at renewal, and done when new governing persons came in. Outside those events, fit and proper largely sat in the background. You had it. You could evidence it when required. Otherwise the matter was dormant. The 2025 standards have changed the expectation substantially. Fit and proper is no longer a point in time check. It is a continuous obligation. You are expected to actively and continuously assure yourself that your governing persons, each of them, remain fit and proper on an ongoing basis, and the regulator can test whether that active, ongoing monitoring is happening. That is a significant shift, and most RTOs haven't fully caught up to it. This episode is about what the new expectation actually looks like in practice, what the standards require, what operationalizing the requirement involves, where most RTOs are exposed, and what to install this quarter to close the gap. Here is the problem this episode addresses. When most RTO leaders think about fit and proper, they think about the fit and proper person declaration, the document each governing person signs at the point of appointment or renewal. The declaration is the visible artifact. In most RTOs, it is also, effectively, the entirety of the organization's fit and proper compliance. The declaration is signed, it is filed. The next time anyone thinks about it is the next time a declaration needs to be signed, years later, usually.
A governing person two years into their term is involved in an unrelated business, in a matter that results in a civil penalty. The penalty itself is not especially serious. It does not involve the training sector. It does not involve any allegation of dishonesty. The person views it as a private business matter that does not affect their role with the RTO. Under a point-in-time regime, this might never come to the RTO's attention. The person does not consider it relevant. The RTO does not have a mechanism that would pick it up. Nothing changes in the relationship. At the next declaration cycle, perhaps three or four years away, the governing person may or may not mention it, depending on how they interpret the declaration's questions. Under the 2025 regime, this is a governance problem because the ongoing fit and proper obligation means the RTO is expected to have systems that would actively identify matters of this kind. Not at the next declaration cycle, but as they arise. And the governing person has an obligation to disclose matters that affect their fitness and propriety when those matters occur, not only at declaration points. If those systems don't exist, the RTO has a structural gap, and under continuous assurance, that gap is itself a compliance question. Let me walk through what the standards actually require. The fit and proper person requirements are set out in Schedule 1 of the compliance standards for NVR registered training organizations. The schedule covers six substantive areas of consideration. The first is application, the obligation to recognise the fit and proper person requirements as a positive obligation on the RTO that requires active and ongoing education and monitoring of your staff, especially your governing persons. That phrase active and ongoing monitoring is the key phrase. It is not checked at commencement. It is not reviewed
at renewal. It is ongoing. The second is compliance with law. Regardless of whether a conviction was recorded, and the regulator may consider the seriousness of and the time elapsed since the offense. This is a broader test than most RTOs apply at declaration time. The declaration typically asks specific questions. The regulator's consideration, if it ever reaches consideration, is broader. The third is management history. Has the person been involved in the management of another organization that has been subject to regulatory action? Has another organization they were involved in been deregistered, suspended, or had its scope restricted? These matters may be relevant. The fourth is financial record. Has the person been bankrupt? Subject to insolvency proceedings? Had judgments entered against them for debts? The fifth is provision of information. Has the person previously provided inaccurate or misleading information to the regulator or to any other government body? Have they failed to comply with an obligation to provide information? The sixth is previous conduct. Has the person previously been involved in circumstances that raise concerns about their fitness to hold positions of trust or responsibility? And there is a seventh general category, additional considerations. The regulator is not limited to the specific domains listed. Other matters may be relevant. That is what the standards cover. Now let me talk about operationalizing the requirement because this is where most RTOs are currently exposed. You cannot continuously monitor fit and proper status by doing nothing between declaration cycles. You need a system that actively addresses the requirement. Let me first make one observation worth sitting with. The six domains in the schedule are not a checklist the regulator will tick off. They are the framework your RTO is expected to understand and use in its own ongoing monitoring, which means your governance system is expected to be capable of recognizing matters that would fall within any of these six areas and
responding to them appropriately. Most RTOs cannot currently do that. Not because they are negligent, because the infrastructure has never been built. Under the previous standards, it didn't need to exist. Under the 2025 standards, it does. Three architectural moves work. The first is the ongoing disclosure obligation built into the governing person's role. Every governing person at appointment receives a clear written articulation of their ongoing disclosure obligation. Not sign this declaration. The actual standing obligation to disclose promptly any matter that arises during their term that could affect their fitness and propriety. Define specifically enough that they know what triggers disclosure. Defined broadly enough to capture the kind of matters the standards contemplate. This obligation is reinforced annually, not three yearly.
A brief standing item at an annual governance meeting, asking each governing person to confirm that no matters have arisen that would require disclosure. The confirmation is recorded. This sounds uncomfortable. It is. The discomfort is exactly why it needs to be a system rather than a conversation, because in the absence of a system, it doesn't happen. The second is the independent due diligence cycle. Due diligence on governing persons is not a one-time event. The benchmark RTOs run a structured due diligence cycle, typically annually, that includes a refresh of the foundational checks done at appointment, verification of any changes in circumstances, review of any disclosures made during the year. Documentation that these checks have been conducted. This is not the RTO investigating its governing persons. It is the RTO meeting its ongoing monitoring obligation. The framing matters because if the framing is investigative, governing persons resist. If the framing is this is the compliance work the RTO has to do annually, governing persons cooperate. Let me be concrete about what an annual due diligence cycle actually looks like, because this is where most RTOs need practical guidance. Once a year for each governing person, the RTO conducts a modest set of checks. Verification that the contact details and professional information on file are current. Confirmation that the person's role outside the RTO has not materially changed, and where it has, capture of the change. Refresh of any background checks that are appropriate to the role and to the RTO's own risk profile, commonly a national police check, and in some cases checks against regulatory registers relevant to the person's other directorships or positions. Review of any disclosures made during the year. Documentation of the review itself. The total time per governing person for a well-designed annual cycle is under an hour. It is not onerous. The obstacle is not workload, it is unfamiliarity. Most RTOs don't do it because they have never done it. Once the rhythm is established, it becomes routine. The third is the register. A fit and proper register maintained as a controlled document that records for each governing person the dates of their original declaration, any subsequent disclosures, any additional verifications conducted, and the next scheduled due diligence event. This register is governance grade evidence. It is what the regulator would look at if they wanted to test the RTO's active and ongoing monitoring. And it either demonstrates the system is operating or it does not. Three architectural moves. Ongoing disclosure obligation, independent due diligence cycle, fit and proper register as controlled document. Install all three, and you have moved from point-in-time compliance to continuous compliance. Where I see RTOs most commonly exposed is in the gap between what they believe their fit and proper compliance looks like and what it actually looks like when tested. Let me name the three most common gaps. The first gap is the declaration only posture. We have signed declarations for every governing person. Yes, but you have not monitored anything since. The declaration is a snapshot from appointment. The obligation is ongoing. The second gap is the narrow view of applicability. Fit and proper applies to governing persons, yes, but many RTOs fail to extend the analogous due diligence to the individuals who deliver or
administer the training on the RTO's behalf, including under third-party arrangements. If your RTO has a third-party delivery partner and you have not applied your due diligence to the staff of that partner who deliver VET on your RTO's behalf, you have a gap. The practice guide makes this explicit. The third party applicability is worth dwelling on because it catches out many RTOs. The obligation is not the third party is responsible for their own staff. The obligation is that the RTO, the registered entity, remains accountable for the fit and proper status of anyone delivering VET on its behalf. If a trainer employed by your third-party partner has a disqualifying history and you delegated the due diligence entirely to the partner without verifying it yourself, the regulator's view is that your accountability remains intact. You have not transferred the obligation by contracting it out. The practical implication is that your third-party arrangements need to include due diligence requirements that meet your own standards, and your compliance architecture needs to verify, not just trust, that those requirements are being met. This is not about second guessing your partner. It is about meeting an obligation the standards place on you specifically. The third gap is the absence of an institutional memory. When a governing person leaves, the records of their fit and proper compliance during their term should remain as part of the RTO's governance record. Many RTOs archive these records lightly or let them drift. If three years after a governing person's departure a question arises about whether something that happened during their term was appropriately monitored, the answer should be in the record. If the record is absent, the answer is weaker. Three gaps declaration only posture, narrow applicability, absent institutional memory. Let me also mention a fourth pattern I see, because it's worth naming. And it is for years. It never reaches the top of the list because nothing ever forces it to. And then one day something does force it. An audit that tests fit and proper posture specifically. Or a matter involving a governing person that raises questions the RTO cannot clearly answer. At that point, the good intentions don't protect anyone. The system protects you. Intentions don't. All of these are fixable. None of them require sophisticated systems. They require a decision to treat fit and proper as continuous rather than episodic. And then the installation of modest architecture to support that treatment. Three mistakes I see RTOs make when they try to install this. The first mistake is making it a legal process. Fit and proper compliance does not require your lawyers to run it. It requires modest governance architecture. When RTOs over legalize it, governing persons disengage and the system becomes ceremonial. The second mistake is undercommunicating the why. If governing persons don't understand why the ongoing obligation is different from the point-in-time one, they treat it as bureaucratic overhead. The briefing matters. The new standards expect continuous assurance. Fit and proper
is part of that. Governing persons should know. The third mistake is treating the system as optional because the risk feels low. Our governing persons are all fine. Nothing is going to come up. Perhaps probably even. But the compliance obligation is not conditional on whether anything comes up. It is an obligation to have a system that would identify matters if they did. And the regulator tests the system's existence, not the outcomes it happens to produce. There is one more thing worth saying about installing this. The obligation falls on the RTO, but the practical work requires engagement from the governing persons themselves. The annual disclosure confirmation the participation in the due diligence cycle. Most governing persons cooperate readily when the rationale is explained. What they resent is being asked to do things that seem arbitrary or bureaucratic without clear reasoning. A briefing that explains the shift from point in time to continuous obligation, a briefing that treats the governing persons as responsible adults who will engage with a well-reasoned compliance framework, usually lands well. What does not land well is compliance framed as suspicion. We need to check on you. Here is a form we need you to sign. The regulator requires this. Pull your fit and proper documentation. For each governing person currently enroll, answer three questions. When was their last declaration signed? When was the last independent check or verification conducted? Is there a standing obligation in writing that requires them to disclose any matters that arise during their term? If any of those answers is I'm not sure or I'd have to check, you have just identified your most important compliance design work for the quarter. The fit and proper obligation under the 2025 standards sits at the intersection of both books. The governance shift frames why continuous assurance requires
this kind of continuous monitoring at governance level. It is not a unique compliance requirement. It is a specific expression of the broader governance shift. The eight critical drivers framework in driver 8, governance, quality, and compliance includes the evidence gate architecture that makes fit and proper records genuinely governance grade rather than archival. Both books launch in June 2026, sold together as the RTO governance bundle. The landing page is governance shift.vivacity.com.au. Next week, episode 46. Self assurance is not a document, it is a practice. The 2025 Standards Environment has elevated self assurance from a periodic compliance. activity to a continuous operating discipline. And the way most RTOs currently do self-assurance as a scheduled internal review once or twice a year does not meet the new expectation. What does? That is what we work through next week.
