17.3 CPSI Code of Professional Conduct

17.3 CPSI Code of Professional Conduct

Domain 5F is the NRPA CPSI Code of Professional Conduct, printed at page 20 of the Candidate Handbook (effective 8/18/2025). The Code is not optional courtesy. It is the set of professional duties you accept when the National Certification Board confirms the credential. Individuals who fail to practice those standards are subject to loss of certification after a review and enforcement process run by the Executive Committee of the Certified Playground Safety Inspector Certification Committee. Domain 5F tests whether you can apply each duty on a real pad, not whether you can recite the page as a block of text.

Teach the duties the way you would brief a new inspector in the truck — one obligation, one field example.

Eleven duties, in the inspector's words

1. Hold the safety of playground users paramount. Every later duty loses if this one loses. The director wants the bay open for pictures. The parent-teacher group paid for the climber. A child can still catch a hood on that slide. Users come first.

2. Use the most current standard of care. That means current ASTM public-use equipment (F1487), playground surfacing (F1292 and the related surfacing family), F2373 for the 6-through-23-month bay, and the current CPSC Public Playground Safety Handbook. Auditing a 2026 install with a 2008 photocopy is a Code failure, not close enough.

3. Maintain currency and competency, including your tools. A CPSI whose torso probe, head probe, protrusion gauges, and feeler gauge are missing, bent, or homemade is not competent that morning. Recertification, the current Handbook, and a kit you actually carry are the duty.

4. Identify and document every noncompliance, with a citation to the specific criterion. Slide looks sketchy is not a finding. South-bay hood at the chute transition fails the clothing-catch geometry; CPSC §3.2 / §5.3.6.7 is a finding. The Code wants the specific portion of the criterion document, using a standard inspection process.

5. Prioritize noncompliances by foreseeable consequences. This is the same ranking logic Domain 1E taught. A clothing-catch on a moving slide is not scheduled in the same pile as a missing end cap that does not fail a gauge. Consequence and likelihood set the order, not the owner's embarrassment.

6. Advise the owner of seriously dangerous conditions promptly and in the written report; omit no adverse findings. Verbal-only warnings in the parking lot do not satisfy the duty. Leaving a Priority 1 out of the PDF because the ribbon-cutting is tomorrow is an omission. Prompt notice plus the written record. Both.

7. Never inspect without the owner's knowledge and consent. A parent group that wants you to surprise the school on Saturday is asking you to break the Code. Get the district's or the park owner's consent first. No consent, no inspection.

8. Never inspect in order to discredit another inspector, owner, or manufacturer, or to sell competing products. You are not a stealth salesperson and you are not a hired antagonist for a rival auditor. If a manufacturer is paying you to walk competitors' parks and produce dirt, stop.

9. Never give findings to anyone other than the owner unless the owner authorizes it. The reporter, the rival contractor, the angry parent, and social-media followers are not the client. The owner may authorize a copy to an insurer, an attorney, or a second CPSI. Until that authorization exists, the report stays with the owner.

10. Comply with laws and avoid illegal, fraudulent, unethical, or improper conduct. Do not fabricate gauge results. Do not backdate an inspection form. Do not take a cash courtesy to change a priority. Federal, state, and local law still apply to a person holding a wallet card.

11. Serve all individuals fairly, without unlawful discrimination. The Code's equity language tracks NRPA's non-discrimination statement: services without regard to race, disability, religion, color, national origin, age, gender, veteran status, marital status, personal appearance, sexual orientation, family responsibilities, political affiliation, source of income, pregnancy, childbirth, or any other unlawful basis. The tot lot in a lower-income ward gets the same gauges and the same honesty as the bond-funded flagship.

What a violation costs

The Handbook does not treat the Code as a suggestion. A negative finding under the Certification Committee's Executive Committee process can end in loss of the CPSI credential. That is separate from whatever the owner, a court, or a licensing board may do. Domain 5F questions will dress a duty in a story — the ribbon-cutting, the rival manufacturer, the parent group, the missing probe. Answer with the duty, not with the politics of the story.

The Code also sits on top of the rest of Domain 5. Injury records (5D) and a written standard-of-care policy (5E) still fail if the inspector who fills them out omits the dangerous condition, inspects without consent, or hands the file to a salesperson. Ethics is not a last chapter you skip. It is the rule that makes the other chapters honest.

A compact field list you can carry:

• Users first, then the current ASTM and CPSC pages.
• Tools in the bag; citations on the page; ranking by foreseeable harm.
• Tell the owner now, write it down, omit nothing.
• Consent before you walk; findings stay with the owner unless authorized.
• No smear inspections, no sales inspections, no unlawful shortcuts, no unequal service.

That is the Code as it is used, not as a dump of page 20.