Management Systems Auditor + Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG)

Lead auditor capability for the age of ESG accountability.

Behind every ESG report that stands up to scrutiny, there is someone who can separate substance from spin: someone who knows how to test environmental, social, and governance claims against evidence rather than take them on faith. That person could be you.

This bundle is complete ISO lead auditor training with an ESG specialisation, arriving just as the scrutiny gets serious. Investors, regulators, and customers have stopped accepting glossy sustainability statements at face value, and greenwashing claims now carry real consequences. The Management Systems Auditor course builds your management system auditing foundation to ISO 19011:2026, with remote auditing methods from ISO/IEC TS 17012:2024 integrated throughout. The ESG Specialist course then takes you inside IWA 48:2024, the international framework for implementing ESG principles, from overarching principles and risk through the environmental, social, and governance pillars to compliance, reporting, and continual improvement.

The bundle is open to everyone, and it suits compliance career development at any stage. No prior auditing or sustainability experience is needed, whether you are starting fresh or formalising skills you already use in ESG, sustainability, or governance work.

The management system auditing methodology you build here also transfers across legislative and regulatory compliance contexts, including the sustainability reporting frameworks now taking effect worldwide.

You will be issued with an Exemplar Global Statement of Attainment covering AU26 and TL26 on successful completion of Management Systems Auditor, and a Certificate of Completion for the ESG Specialist course, professional auditing credentials for a field crying out for rigour.

Who this bundle is for

ESG has plenty of storytellers and not nearly enough people who can check the story. The professionals who can audit ESG claims with the same discipline applied to quality or safety systems are the ones organisations, investors, and regulators will trust. This bundle is for people who want to be exactly that:

• Newcomers building a compliance and auditing career at the point where ESG demand is growing fastest
• Sustainability and ESG professionals who need recognised auditing capability behind their reporting
• Internal auditors who want to add ESG programmes to their first-party audit scope
• Governance, risk, and compliance professionals formalising the ESG side of their role
• Aspiring external and certification auditors building an ESG assurance portfolio
• Consultants advising clients on ESG implementation and IWA 48 alignment
• Teams and organisations building in-house ESG audit capability, with group enrolment available through ATOL corporate training
• Anyone building toward Exemplar Global Lead Auditor personnel certification with an ESG focus

What you'll be able to do after this bundle

Professional auditing credentials matter most when they map to what you can actually do. By the time you complete both courses, you will be able to:

• Plan, conduct, and lead management system audits using a consistent ISO 19011:2026 methodology
• Lead an audit team through every stage of an audit, from initiation and planning through to reporting and corrective action follow-up
• Interpret IWA 48:2024 across its environmental, social, and governance pillars, knowing what each principle asks of an organisation
• Evaluate how an organisation identifies and manages its ESG risks and opportunities
• Test ESG claims, compliance, and reporting against evidence, the skill that separates assurance from greenwashing
• Audit effectively in on-site, remote, and hybrid environments using ISO/IEC TS 17012:2024 methods
• Write audit findings and reports that are clear, accurate, fair, and useful to the organisation
• Demonstrate Exemplar Global competency units and focused ESG training to employers, clients, and certification bodies

What you'll learn

Two courses, one structured learning pathway. Each theme below builds on the one before it.

Auditing any management system with confidence

Before you can audit ESG effectively, you need to understand how auditing works. The Management Systems Auditor course builds that foundation using ISO 19011:2026 and ISO/IEC TS 17012:2024 for remote auditing. You will learn the seven auditing principles, how to plan and manage an audit programme, collect and evaluate evidence, run opening and closing meetings, document findings, and lead a team through a complete audit from initiation to follow-up.

The principles that hold ESG together

IWA 48:2024 is the international framework for implementing environmental, social, and governance principles, and it gives ESG something it has badly needed: structure. You will learn the overarching principles, how ESG risks and opportunities are identified and managed, and how the framework turns broad commitments into practices an auditor can actually examine.

The three pillars, clause by clause

The specialist course works through each pillar in turn: environmental practices, social practices, and governance practices, followed by compliance and conformity, ESG reporting, and continual improvement. You will finish knowing what evidence to look for behind each pillar and where ESG programmes most often drift from what their reports claim.

For the full module-by-module breakdown across both courses, see the Modules tab above.