This is why, some societies (especially in the US) have contracted commercial providers to
deliver these services for them. The problem with commercial providers is that they need to
be profitable and make money. You only really make money in this space through the
workshops (ie the knowledge component) - the practice and professional interaction
elements (skills, values and aptitudes) are decidedly non-commercial and very labour
intensive. Some vendors say that they offer this element, but in my experience, there's
more talk than substance in this part of the deal. Moreover, there is a strong economic
incentive to gloss over the testing component (you want people to feel successful, so you go
easy on testing whether or not they have "got it"). Even if there is testing, it's only of the
knowledge component, not the skills or other attributes required.
Testing is easy to gloss over in this scenario, because if the vendor operates under the
umbrella of a professional society, they can let people assume that the testing and
validation of candidates knowledge is "covered" by the professional society. In fact, to my
knowledge (and I've explored this in some depth), supervision and accountability for testing