AVIXA Membership & Ethics
Introduction
Two technicians can have the same skills. One tells the client the projector they chose is too dim for the room; the other installs it and lets the client find out at the launch. One stops a lift when the sling looks wrong; the other lets it go because the show is late. Only one of them gets called back, and only one of them would be welcome in any professional body's code of conduct.
This book has two halves. The first is about AVIXA, the trade's association: what it is, what membership gives you, the CTS certifications and how to keep them, the standards it publishes, and the events where the trade meets. The second is about ethics: AVIXA's own Code of Ethics and Conduct, point by point, and the situations where it is tested on real jobs.
The facts come from AVIXA's own pages and its certification handbooks dated August 2026, and from US agencies for the law around bribery, harassment and unsafe work. Fees and exam details change: check avixa.org before you book anything.
How to Use This Book
Read the AVIXA chapter when you are planning a certification. Read the ethics chapters before you need them: the situations in them arrive without warning, usually in the middle of a show, and the decision is easier when you have already thought it through.
AVIXA & the Professional Community
AV has a professional home — engaging with it helps you learn, connect, and grow.
What AVIXA is
AVIXA (the Audiovisual and Integrated Experience Association) is the trade association for the commercial AV industry — the professional body that supports AV professionals and the industry worldwide. It does several important things: it offers the certifications (the CTS and its specialisations) that verify competence, it develops standards that define best practices, it provides training and resources for professional development, and it fosters a community and runs events (like trade shows) that connect the industry. AVIXA is, in effect, the professional home of commercial AV, and engaging with it is part of being a professional in the field.
Understanding AVIXA's role helps you see the professional infrastructure of AV: the credentials, standards, learning, and community that support a career. Whether or not you become a member, AVIXA's certifications and standards shape professional AV, and its resources and community are available to help you grow.
AVIXA is the Audiovisual and Integrated Experience Association, the international trade association for the AV industry. It was founded in 1939 and was called InfoComm International until September 2017, which is why its trade show is still called InfoComm. It is based in Reston, Virginia, and describes itself as a hub for professional collaboration, information and community, and the leading resource for AV standards, certification, training, market intelligence and thought leadership.
Its own figures give a sense of size: more than 3,000 enterprise members representing over 20,000 AV professionals in more than 80 countries, and a wider network it puts at over 70,000 people. These count different things, so quote the one you mean.
Membership
AVIXA sells membership to individuals and to companies. Its published prices, still labelled for 2025 when checked on avixa.org in October 2026, are 120 US dollars a year for Premium individual membership and 499 for Elite, with lower prices in emerging economies. Both tiers include free webinars, free entry to the trade show floors, discounts on certification exams and training, a directory listing, council membership and free downloads of AVIXA's standards, which otherwise cost 75 dollars each. Elite adds free access to all of AVIXA's online training.
Company membership runs from Bronze at 600 dollars a year to Gold at 5,250, and includes a number of Elite memberships for staff, Premium benefits for every employee and the CTS Prep Pathway training for all of them. If you work for an integrator or rental house, ask whether it is already a member before paying yourself. Student membership is a course package aimed at people entering the trade.
Certification: CTS, CTS-D and CTS-I
The Certified Technology Specialist, CTS, is AVIXA's general credential: in AVIXA's words, someone who creates, implements, supports and services AV solutions that meet the client's needs. No experience is required to apply, only agreement to the terms, which include the Code of Ethics. The exam is 115 multiple-choice questions, 15 of them unscored pilot questions, in 150 minutes, at a Pearson VUE test centre, in English, Spanish or German.
The two specialist credentials sit on top of it. CTS-D is for designers: assessing client needs, designing systems, verifying them and closing out the project. CTS-I is for installers: installing, configuring, testing and documenting systems and training the users. Both require a valid CTS with no sanctions or pending investigations, recommend three to four years of experience in that work, and are 110 questions in 150 minutes, in English only.
Fees from 1 January 2025 are 390 dollars for members and 490 for non-members for the CTS, and 490 and 590 for each specialist exam, with a 150-dollar retest. The programme is accredited to ISO/IEC 17024 by the ANSI National Accreditation Board, the international standard for certifying people, and the CTS is approved for GI Bill reimbursement for US veterans.
Keeping a certification: renewal units
A CTS is valid for three years. To renew, you complete 30 renewal units (RUs) in that time, pay the renewal fee, 175 dollars for the general CTS, and sign again to abide by the Code of Ethics and Conduct. A holder of the CTS and one specialist credential renews at the specialist level only: 30 RUs, at least 15 of them in the specialism.
Renewal units are earned by learning and giving back. A course from a non-manufacturer is worth 1 RU an hour, a manufacturer's course 1 RU every two hours, a college course up to 10. Teaching earns 1 RU per contact hour, volunteering up to 3 a year per role, and published articles 2 each. Log them as you go, not in the last month of the third year.
Standards
AVIXA writes standards through a Standards Steering Committee that is its official ANSI consensus body, with more than 700 volunteers. They are the published numbers behind statements such as "the screen is big enough" or "the sound is even". The ones a technician meets most are below.
ANSI/AVIXA V202.01, Display Image Size for 2D Content, known as DISCAS, sizes screens from what viewers must read. A102.01 sets audio coverage uniformity, and V201.01 image contrast ratio. D401.01 sets documentation requirements, F501.01 cable labelling, F502.01 rack building, and D402.02, formerly INFOCOMM 10:2013, performance verification. Older numbers survive on drawings and in specifications: INFOCOMM 2M is now D401.01, and 1M was the first audio coverage standard.
InfoComm and local events
InfoComm is AVIXA's annual trade show in the United States. The 2026 show in Las Vegas reported 28,132 verified attendees from 94 countries and 807 exhibitors, and it moves to Orlando in 2027. AVIXA also runs InfoComm shows in India, Asia, China and Latin America, where InfoComm America Latina is held in Mexico City, and Integrated Systems Europe in Barcelona is a joint venture between AVIXA and CEDIA.
The local events are often worth more: pop-up days, user groups, regional meetings and groups such as Mujeres AV en Latinoamérica. The people at them are the ones who hire, recommend and crew alongside you in that city.
The value of engaging
Engaging with the professional community — through AVIXA and the industry more broadly — offers real value for your career. You can learn (through training, resources, and others' knowledge), connect (building the network and relationships that drive opportunity in this relationship-driven industry), and build credibility (through certifications, standards-based practice, and professional standing). Professionals who engage with their industry community tend to grow faster, find more opportunity, and stay current, because they are plugged into the field's knowledge and people. Engagement is an investment in your professional growth.
The industry is a community, and being part of it — learning from it, contributing to it, and building relationships within it — is how careers grow. Membership in AVIXA is one form of this, offering resources, certification, and community; broader engagement (attending events, connecting with peers, staying current) is another. The professional who engages with their industry community invests in a stronger, more connected, more current career. Being part of the professional community matters.
Membership is not a requirement for a career; the habits it supports are. Keep learning on a schedule, keep a record of it, meet the people in your market away from a show, and read the standards that apply to your work rather than relying on what the last crew did.
Giving back to the trade
Every senior technician was taught by someone. Giving back means mentoring the junior on your crew, answering the newcomer's question without contempt, volunteering on a council or a standard, and teaching. AVIXA counts teaching and volunteering as renewal units, which is a fair description of what they do for a professional: they keep you learning too.
Practice it
A technician with two years of rental and event experience wants an AVIXA credential and later wants to install permanent systems.
- You know which AVIXA credential fits your work, and what it costs.
- You log renewal units as you earn them.
- You have read the standards that apply to your work.
- You go to at least one local event a year.
- You teach someone something on most jobs.
Professional Ethics
Technical skill earns the job; ethics earns the trust that sustains a career.
What professional ethics means
Professional ethics is conducting yourself with integrity and responsibility in your work — doing the right thing, even when it is harder or less profitable. It matters because AV professionals are trusted: clients trust you with their events and money, employers trust you with their reputation and gear, the public trusts that systems are safe, and peers trust you to work fairly. Ethical conduct is what makes that trust justified, and trust is the foundation of every professional relationship and reputation. A technically skilled but unethical professional ultimately fails, because trust, once broken, ends relationships and reputations.
A few core principles capture professional ethics in AV: integrity (honesty and doing what is right — being truthful with clients, not cutting corners, keeping your word), competence (working within your skill and not misrepresenting your abilities — taking on what you can genuinely do well, and getting help or declining what you cannot), and responsibility (to your clients, the public, and your peers — delivering what you promise, keeping people safe, and treating others fairly). Integrity, competence, and responsibility are the foundation of ethical professional conduct, and they apply to every AV professional.
Ethics and law overlap but are not the same. Some unethical things are crimes; many are not, and are simply the things that end a career quietly. A code of conduct writes down what a profession expects of its members beyond the law, so that clients can rely on it and members can point to it when they are pressed to do otherwise.
AVIXA's Code of Ethics and Conduct
Every CTS holder agrees to AVIXA's CTS Code of Ethics and Conduct when they apply and again at every renewal. Each point begins "As a Certified Technology Specialist, I", and together they cover seven things.
Honour and honesty: personal standards of honour and integrity above reproach, conduct that reflects well on the profession, an ethical climate within your organisation and with clients, and a pledge to be truthful and accurate in what you say, do and write.
Law and confidentiality: adhere to the law at all times, and do not reveal facts, data or information obtained in your work without the client's or employer's consent, except as the law requires.
Conflicts and fairness: avoid compromising professional judgement by acknowledging conflicts of interest, and act free of bias with regard to age, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity, race, religion, national origin, disability, marital status and ethnicity.
Competence: take on only work you are capable of by education, training or experience; never misrepresent your own or your colleagues' qualifications or exaggerate your part in any work; admit and accept your own errors without distorting the facts; and keep your knowledge current through recertification.
Safety: have due regard for the physical environment and public safety, health and well-being, and if your judgement is overruled where the public may be endangered, notify your employer, client or another appropriate authority.
Promoting ethics: actively encourage the highest level of ethics in the industry. And the credential itself: tell AVIXA of anything affecting your certification, follow its policies, and remember the certificate and marks are AVIXA's property.
It has teeth. Failure to abide by the code is grounds for denial or revocation of certification. Anyone can file a signed Professional Discipline Complaint with the AVIXA Certification Office; its Ethics and Disciplinary Committee may investigate, reports to the Certification Committee, and publishes sanctions on the AVIXA website.
Integrity and competence
Integrity means honesty and doing right: being truthful with clients about what you can do, what something costs, and what is realistic; not cutting corners (especially on safety) for profit or convenience; keeping your commitments; and being honest when things go wrong. Integrity is tested when honesty is costly — admitting a mistake, telling a client an uncomfortable truth, refusing to do something improper — and it is exactly then that it matters most. An AV professional with integrity is trusted because their word and their work are honest, which is the foundation of every lasting professional relationship.
Competence means working within your genuine ability and being honest about it: taking on work you can do well, getting help or declining work beyond your skill, not misrepresenting your qualifications, and continuing to learn so your competence grows. It is the same limits-and-experts rule that Safety Awareness & Rigging Basics teaches — knowing what you can and cannot do, and acting accordingly, is both safe and ethical. Overstating your abilities or taking on work you cannot do well harms clients and your reputation. Honest competence — doing what you can do well, and being truthful about your limits — is core professional ethics.
The code's competence clause is unusually specific: do not exaggerate your degree of responsibility for any work. A CV that says you designed a system you only installed, or a portfolio of shows where you were the third assistant, breaks it as surely as a false certificate. Say what you did, exactly.
Practice it
An integrator asks a newly certified CTS to sign off a boardroom design as its designer. She installed it; a colleague designed it.
Responsibility, Reputation & Professionalism
Ethics in action: serving clients and the public, and building a reputation that lasts.
Responsibility to clients, public, and peers
Professional responsibility means honouring your obligations to the people your work affects. To clients: delivering what you promise, being honest and fair, protecting their interests, and serving their genuine needs. To the public: ensuring the systems and work you do are safe (safety is an ethical obligation — people's safety depends on you doing your work right). To peers and the industry: treating colleagues fairly, not undermining or misrepresenting, contributing to a healthy professional community, and upholding the standards of the profession. Responsibility to clients, public, and peers is ethics put into practice across all your professional relationships.
This responsibility is real and consequential: a client relies on you, the public relies on safe systems, and the profession relies on its members conducting themselves well. The ethical AV professional takes these responsibilities seriously — delivering for clients, never compromising safety, and being a fair and contributing member of the industry. Recognising that your work carries responsibility to others — and meeting it — is what distinguishes a true professional from someone merely doing a job. Professional responsibility is ethics lived out in your obligations to others.
Safety is an ethical call
The code makes safety an ethical duty, not only a rule: if your judgement is overruled where people may be endangered, you tell your employer, the client or another authority. On a stage that means stopping a lift when a sling is damaged, refusing to fly a speaker without a rated point, and saying so to the person in charge, however late the show is.
US law protects refusing dangerous work only in narrow conditions. OSHA says the refusal is protected when you asked the employer to fix the danger and it did not, you refused in good faith, a reasonable person would agree there is a real danger of death or serious injury, and there is no time to get it fixed through normal enforcement. A complaint of retaliation must reach OSHA within 30 days.
Confidentiality
AV people see and hear what others do not: the board meeting, the unannounced product, the chief executive's rehearsal, the broadcast nobody was supposed to record. The code says not to reveal information obtained in your work without consent, except as the law requires.
In practice that means no photographs of a client's content on your phone, no social media posts from inside a closed event until the client has gone public, no recordings kept after the job, and no talking about what you heard in the venue bar. Many clients make you sign a non-disclosure agreement; the code applies whether they do or not.
Gifts, kickbacks and conflicts of interest
A conflict of interest is anything that gives you a reason to advise against the client's interest: a commission from the manufacturer you recommend, a share in the rental house you send work to, a relative's company in the bid. The code does not ban every conflict; it says acknowledge it, so the client can judge your advice knowing about it.
Some are crimes. In Florida, an employee or agent who accepts a benefit intending to violate a duty to their employer commits commercial bribery, a third-degree felony under section 838.15; the federal Travel Act makes using interstate travel or mail to carry on bribery that breaks state law a federal crime. A small gift is not a bribe, but ask: would I be comfortable if the client saw this? If not, decline, or tell your employer.
Ethics, reputation, and professionalism
Ethics and reputation are deeply linked: your reputation — the most valuable asset in a relationship-driven industry — is built largely on your ethics. Being known as honest, reliable, competent, and responsible is what earns the trust that brings repeat work, referrals, and opportunity; being known as the opposite quietly ends a career. Ethical conduct is not just right in principle; it is also, over time, the smart and successful path, because trust compounds into reputation and reputation drives a career. The ethical professional and the successful professional are, in the long run, the same person.
Professionalism brings it all together: conducting yourself with integrity, competence, and responsibility, engaging constructively with your industry community, and building a reputation as someone trustworthy. This is the professional side of AV that complements the technical skill — and it is what makes a technically skilled person into a trusted professional. Carry ethics and professionalism into everything you do, and combined with your technical craft, they make you the kind of AV professional clients, employers, and peers want to work with. Ethics is the foundation of a lasting professional career.
Practice it
A loudspeaker manufacturer offers a production company's technical director two tickets to a big game, the week before the company chooses a new speaker system.
Living It in Your Work
Ethics is practised in everyday decisions, not just stated in principle.
Everyday ethical practice
Ethics shows up in everyday decisions, not grand statements. Do you tell the client the truth about a delay, or hide it? Do you cut a safety corner to save time, or hold the line? Do you take on work you cannot really do, or get help? Do you keep your commitment when it is inconvenient? Do you treat a colleague fairly when it costs you? These everyday choices are where ethics is real, and consistently choosing the honest, responsible, competent path — especially when it is harder — is what makes you an ethical professional. Ethics is a practice of small right decisions, accumulated over a career.
This connects ethics to the professionalism and conduct taught in the other books in this series (Set & Stage Etiquette, Client & Stakeholder Communication, the Department Leadership series, Safety Awareness & Rigging Basics): being reliable, honest, safe, fair, and competent in your daily work is ethics in action. The ethical professional does not need a rulebook for most situations; they have internalised integrity, competence, and responsibility and act on them by habit. Living ethics in your everyday work — choosing right consistently, especially under pressure — is what professional ethics actually means.
Honesty about mistakes
Everyone makes mistakes on shows. The code asks you to admit and accept your errors without distorting the facts. Tell the person who needs to know, as soon as you can: what happened, what you did about it, and what will stop it happening again. A client forgives a dropped feed far more readily than a story about it that turns out to be untrue.
Billing honestly
The hours on the invoice are the hours worked. That rules out rounding a twelve-hour day up to fourteen, billing a crew member who left at lunch for the whole day, charging for gear that stayed on the truck, and adding a cross-hire that was never hired. It also rules out the reverse: hiding overtime from a client because it is awkward, then putting it on the next invoice.
Credit and respect on the crew
Name the person who did the work. If the junior solved the problem, say so to the client; if the design was a colleague's, say so in the portfolio. The code forbids exaggerating your responsibility for any work, and it asks you to act free of bias towards the people you work with, whoever they are.
Harassment and speaking up
Harassment is unwelcome conduct based on race, colour, religion, sex and other protected characteristics. In the US the EEOC says it is a form of employment discrimination under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and other laws, and it is unlawful when putting up with it becomes a condition of the job or when it is severe or pervasive enough to create a hostile environment.
On a crew that means the joke at someone's expense, the comment on someone's body, the unwanted touch in a dark wing. If it happens to you or in front of you, say so if it is safe to, write down what happened and when, and tell the person who can act on it: the crew chief, the production manager, your employer's HR.
The professional you become
Pulling it together, the professional side of AV — engaging with the community and conducting yourself ethically — shapes the professional you become. Combined with technical skill, integrity, competence, responsibility, and professional engagement make you a trusted, respected, well-connected AV professional with a strong reputation and a lasting career. This is the complete professional: not just someone who can do the technical work, but someone who can be trusted to do it honestly, responsibly, and well, and who is part of and contributes to their professional community. That complete professionalism is the goal.
Carry this into your career: be technically excellent and ethically sound, engage with your industry, and build a reputation as someone trustworthy. The technical books in this series build your skill; this professional side ensures that skill is wrapped in the integrity, responsibility, and professional standing that make a real, lasting AV career. Ethics and professionalism are not separate from being good at AV — they are part of being a true AV professional, and they are what make a skilled technician into someone the industry trusts and values for the long term.
Try this. Think of a situation where doing the right thing would cost you something (time, money, an easy path). How would integrity, competence, or responsibility guide your choice, and why does choosing right matter for your reputation?
Practice it
After a corporate show, a crew chief notices the call ended at 6 pm but the timesheet he is about to send shows 8 pm for everyone.
- You tell the client about a mistake before they find it.
- Every invoice shows the hours and gear actually used.
- You name who did the work.
- You say something when someone on the crew is harassed.
- You stop work you believe is unsafe, and say why.
Putting It Together
Technical skill plus professional ethics and community make a complete AV professional.
The complete professional
Stepping back, being a complete AV professional means combining technical competence (the skills the other books in this series teach) with professional ethics (integrity, competence, responsibility) and engagement with the professional community (AVIXA, certification, the industry network). The technical skill lets you do the work; the ethics make you trustworthy; the community connection helps you learn, grow, and find opportunity. Together they make a professional who is skilled, trusted, and connected — which is what a lasting, successful AV career is built on. Neither technical skill nor professionalism alone is enough; the complete professional has both.
This professional side is the complement to all the technical learning in the other books in this series: audio, video, lighting, networking, operations, and more. This book adds the professional foundation — ethics, conduct, and community — that turns those skills into a trusted, professional career. Recognising that being an AV professional includes how you conduct yourself and engage with the field, not just what you can technically do, completes the picture of professional development.
When a hard call comes, run it through a few questions. Is it legal? What does the code say? Would I be comfortable if the client, my employer and my crew saw exactly what I did? Who is harmed, and can they protect themselves? If the answer is still unclear, ask someone senior you trust before acting, and write down what you decided and why.
Carrying it forward
Carry the professional foundation forward in everything you do: act with integrity, work within and grow your competence, take responsibility to your clients, the public, and your peers, engage with your professional community, and build a reputation as someone trustworthy and skilled. Pursue the certifications that verify your competence, connect with the industry that supports your growth, and conduct yourself ethically on every job. This professional conduct, combined with your technical craft, is what makes a real AV career — respected, trusted, and lasting.
The industry needs not just skilled technicians but trustworthy professionals, and being both is what makes you valued for the long term. Ethics and professional engagement are the foundation beneath a successful career, supporting and amplifying your technical skill. As you grow in AV, keep developing both sides — the craft and the professionalism — and you will build the kind of career, reputation, and standing that a true AV professional enjoys. Skill gets you in; professionalism and ethics keep you trusted and successful for a lifetime in the field.
Practice it
A client asks a technician to quietly record a confidential board meeting for an executive who is not on the invitation list.
Glossary
| AVIXA | The Audiovisual and Integrated Experience Association, formerly InfoComm International |
| CTS | Certified Technology Specialist, AVIXA's general credential |
| CTS-D | AVIXA's design credential |
| CTS-I | AVIXA's installation credential |
| Renewal unit | The credit earned by learning or giving back, 30 needed every three years |
| Code of Ethics and Conduct | The rules every CTS holder agrees to |
| Conflict of interest | A reason to advise against the client's interest |
| Confidentiality | Not revealing what you learn in your work without consent |
| Commercial bribery | Accepting a benefit to violate a duty to your employer |
| DISCAS | AVIXA's standard for sizing screens from what viewers must read |
| ISO/IEC 17024 | The international standard for bodies that certify people |
| Harassment | Unwelcome conduct based on a protected characteristic |
| InfoComm | AVIXA's trade shows |
| Integrity | Being truthful and keeping to what is right when it costs you |
Where to Go Next
AVIXA's CTS handbook sets out the exam and the full code. Safety Awareness and Rigging Basics covers the safety calls in detail, Client and Stakeholder Communication the conversations, and AV Consulting the independence a consultant owes a client.
What the gear actually looks like
Every device named in this book, in one place. Recognition is the whole point of Chapter 4 — use this page to attach a picture to each name before you meet it on a dock at six in the morning.
Find the destination.
Work along the path between them.