The stakeholder parties retain the firm jointly, and the Neutral serves all parties equally and none individually. No party is the firm's client to the exclusion of any other. Every other safeguard on this page descends from that structure.

After a conflict check, the firm proposes three candidate Neutrals with documented rationale for each, and the parties select. The firm does not assign.

Neutrals disclose prior relationships with project stakeholders before engagement, report emerging conflicts during it, and accept disqualification where a conflict cannot be managed.

The Neutral never expresses agreement or disagreement with any party's positions in project meetings. The Neutral attends to observe, and asks questions. Evaluations go to everyone through the engagement's defined advisory channels.

Reports and evaluations are distributed to all signatory stakeholders at the same time.

Positions appear in the report; names do not. People speak candidly to a Neutral because they do not appear in the report by name.

Compensation is never contingent on outcome: no fee arrangement rewards any particular finding, settlement, or award.

If the parties ever want a binding decision, the embedded Neutral does not simply convert into an arbitrator. Disclosure is made in writing, and the parties are offered a fresh arbitrator unconnected to the project, as of right.