If you are hearing more and more about double materiality and feeling unsure where to start, you are not alone. Many companies know it is required for CSRD and increasingly expected by investors and stakeholders, but far fewer understand how to actually do it in a way that is defensible, practical, and useful for decision making.
A double materiality assessment does not need to be overly complex or academic. At its core, it is a structured way to understand two things at the same time. First, which ESG issues could reasonably have a financial impact on your business. Second, which ESG issues your company has the most significant impact on externally, including people, the environment, and society.
Below is the exact process we use when helping companies complete a double materiality assessment. This approach is grounded in real world implementation, aligns with regulatory expectations, and is designed to produce results you can actually use.
Every strong double materiality assessment starts with research. Before any interviews or surveys, you need to understand the landscape your company operates in.
We typically begin by looking at the following:
This step is not about copying what others are doing. It is about understanding which ESG issues consistently show up as important within your industry and why.
Frameworks play a critical role here. We review major frameworks such as CSRD, ESRS, GRI, SASB, TCFD, CDP, and others that are relevant to the company. Each framework provides insight into which environmental, social, and governance topics are commonly considered material for specific industries.
The outcome of this step is an initial long list of potential ESG issues that could reasonably be relevant to the business.
Once the research is complete, the next step is to formalize an initial list of ESG issues. These typically span environmental topics like climate change, energy use, water, waste, and biodiversity, social topics like labor practices, health and safety, supply chain impacts, and community engagement, and governance topics like ethics, compliance, data privacy, and board oversight.
At this stage, we also map each issue to the relevant reporting frameworks. This mapping serves two important purposes.
First, it ensures alignment with regulatory and reporting expectations.
Second, it creates a consistent reference point that can be used throughout interviews, surveys, and scoring.
This mapped issue list becomes the backbone of the entire assessment.
With the initial issue list in hand, we move into interviews. Internal stakeholder interviews are one of the most valuable parts of a double materiality assessment.
The goal is to speak with people across the organization who truly understand the business. We intentionally include a wide range of functions, such as finance, operations, supply chain, legal, HR, sustainability, risk, and executive leadership.
During these conversations, we focus on a few core questions:
Toward the end of each interview, we present the initial list of ESG issues and ask stakeholders to begin ranking them. We ask them to assess both financial importance to the business and the company’s external impact on each issue.
This is where the first layer of quantitative input begins to emerge, supported by strong qualitative context.
Double materiality requires an external perspective. A company’s internal view alone is not sufficient.
External stakeholders may include customers, strategic partners, suppliers, nonprofit organizations, industry groups, investors, or regulators, depending on the business.
The interview structure is similar to internal interviews, but the lens is different. External stakeholders are asked how they see the company or industry impacting environmental and social issues, where they see the greatest risks or concerns, and which topics matter most from their perspective.
These conversations often surface blind spots and help validate or challenge internal assumptions.
By this point, you have completed research and interviews. Patterns begin to emerge. Some issues consistently rise to the top. Others fall away or are clearly less relevant.
At this stage, we refine and finalize the list of material ESG issues. This list is not meant to be overly long. It should be focused, defensible, and relevant to the business.
This finalized list becomes the basis for quantitative surveys.
Surveys allow you to move from directional feedback to measurable results.
Surveys are used to gather structured, quantitative input across a broader group of stakeholders.
They allow you to move from directional feedback to measurable results.
Survey questions are built around the finalized list of ESG issues. For each issue, respondents are typically asked to rate or rank:
The goal is not statistical perfection. The goal is consistency, transparency, and enough data to support scoring.
This step often benefits from additional research to ensure questions are framed clearly and consistently.
Regulators, auditors, and stakeholders increasingly expect companies to explain their results, and how they arrived at them.
We develop a clear scoring methodology that combines inputs from research, interviews, and surveys. Financial impact and external impact are scored separately. Weighting decisions are documented clearly so the process is transparent and repeatable.
This transparency is critical. Regulators, auditors, and stakeholders increasingly expect companies to explain not just their results, but how they arrived at them.
The final output is a double materiality matrix that visually shows which issues are most material from a financial perspective, an impact perspective, or both.
The matrix is important, but it is not the real value. The real value comes from the process.
A well executed double materiality assessment builds internal alignment, improves risk awareness, strengthens strategy, and creates a defensible foundation for ESG reporting and decision making.
When done correctly, it becomes a tool the business actually uses, not just a compliance exercise.
Double materiality does not need to be intimidating. With a structured approach, clear documentation, and thoughtful stakeholder engagement, it becomes a powerful way to understand your business and its role in the world more clearly.
This is the exact process we use with our clients, and it consistently produces results that stand up to scrutiny while remaining practical and actionable.
If you are preparing for CRD, responding to investor pressure, or simply want a clearer picture of your most important ESG risks and impacts, a well run double materiality assessment is one of the most valuable exercises you can undertake.
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