How to Check If Your Investments Match Your Values
A 2025 CFA Institute survey found that over 70% of individual investors say ethics matter to their investment decisions. Fewer than 15% have ever checked their holdings against any independent standard.
The gap is not about apathy. It is about access. Most people have no idea what their money actually supports -- because the data has not been easy to find, or easy to trust.
This guide is a practical, four-step process you can complete in under 15 minutes. No account needed for the first three steps. No financial jargon. Just a clear method for measuring the distance between what you believe and what you own.
Step 1: Know What You Own
Open your brokerage account, ISA provider, or pension dashboard. Write down every stock you hold directly. If you hold index funds or ETFs, look up the top 10 holdings of each -- most providers list these on the fund page.
Why this matters: The S&P 500 is heavily concentrated. Apple, Microsoft, Amazon, Nvidia, and Alphabet alone can make up over 25% of the index. If you own a global tracker fund, you already hold these companies. You just may not know what they have done.
Start with your top 10 to 15 holdings by portfolio weight. These drive the majority of your ethical exposure -- for better or worse.
Step 2: Identify Your Ethical Priorities
Not every ethical dimension matters equally to every investor. Before scoring anything, decide what you actually care about. Mashinii scores companies across 11 ethical dimensions. Here are the most common priorities investors bring:
Climate and environment -- Does the company reduce emissions, or add to them? Does it have science-based targets? Planet-Friendly Business measures this.
Worker treatment -- Pay equity, safety records, union rights, CEO pay ratios. Fair Pay & Worker Respect covers the documented record.
Data privacy and AI ethics -- Breaches, surveillance, algorithmic harm. Safe & Smart Tech tracks penalties and incidents.
Peace and conflict -- Defence contracts, arms financing, involvement in conflict zones. No War, No Weapons captures this.
Animal welfare -- Factory farming, animal testing, wildlife impact. Kind to Animals covers the evidence.
Health access -- Drug pricing, patient programmes, clinical trial transparency. Better Health for All is the relevant dimension.
Pick your top 2 or 3. These are the dimensions you will focus on when reviewing your holdings. You do not need to care about all 11 equally -- most people do not.
Step 3: Score Your Holdings Against Independent Data
Go to mashinii.com/score/search and type in each company name or ticker. Every scored company has a profile showing its performance across all 11 dimensions, with cited sources for every score.
Here is what this looks like in practice. Take one company from your list -- say it is a major tech stock. You search it and see scores across each dimension. Some will be positive. Some will be negative. Each score links to the specific evidence: a court ruling, a regulatory penalty, a verified report.
Focus on the 2 or 3 dimensions you identified in Step 2. If climate is your priority, look at the Planet-Friendly Business score. If worker rights matter most, check Fair Pay & Worker Respect. The scores run from -100 (worst) to +100 (best).
| Score Range | What It Means |
|---|---|
| +40 to +100 | Strong positive evidence. Documented programmes, certifications, measurable outcomes. |
| +10 to +30 | Some positive evidence, but limited scope or recent commitments. |
| 0 | Insufficient evidence in either direction, or positive and negative evidence roughly balanced. |
| -10 to -30 | Documented concerns. Penalties, incidents, or structural issues on record. |
| -40 to -100 | Significant negative evidence. Major fines, repeat violations, or systemic failures documented. |
For deep dives on specific companies, see our head-to-head analyses: Amazon vs Walmart, Meta vs TikTok, HSBC vs Barclays, or the full S&P 500 ethical analysis.
Checking companies one at a time works for your top positions. For a full portfolio, use the portfolio audit tool -- upload your holdings and receive an aggregate breakdown across all 11 dimensions in under two minutes.
Step 4: Decide What to Do With the Results
An audit produces information. What you do with it depends on your priorities and your situation.
Option 1: Divest. Sell holdings that score below your threshold on your priority dimensions. This is the most direct action and the most common response for individual investors.
Option 2: Rebalance. Reduce exposure to your worst-scoring holdings and increase positions in better-scoring alternatives. You do not have to sell everything -- reducing a position from 5% to 1% of your portfolio still changes your overall profile.
Option 3: Engage. If you hold shares, you have a vote. Shareholder resolutions, proxy voting, and direct engagement with investor relations are documented tools. This approach works best for larger holdings and institutional investors.
Option 4: Hold and monitor. If divesting or rebalancing is not practical right now -- because of tax implications, pension restrictions, or lock-in periods -- set a review date. Scores change as new evidence emerges.
None of these options works without data. And that data needs to come from sources independent of the companies themselves.
If you hold investments through a UK pension and want to apply this approach, our guide to ethical investing in UK pensions covers the practical steps. For a look at how index funds score, see our analysis of index funds and ethical alignment.
Common Questions About Ethical Portfolio Auditing
How is this different from ESG ratings? Traditional ESG ratings rely on corporate self-reported data, weight financial materiality over ethical performance, and frequently contradict each other across providers. A company can receive an "A" from one rater and a "C" from another. Mashinii's scores are built from external evidence: court outcomes, regulatory penalties, verified reporting, and third-party audits. For the full comparison, see our analysis of ESG ratings vs independent data.
Do I need to sell everything that scores negative? No. Nearly every widely held company carries some negative scores. The goal is not a perfect portfolio -- it is a portfolio where you understand what you hold and have made conscious decisions about which trade-offs you accept.
What if I only hold index funds? Index funds hold hundreds of companies, and you own all of them. The portfolio audit tool can score the top holdings of any fund. For a detailed look at what sits inside popular ethical ETFs, see our sustainable fund analysis.
Can this approach cost me returns? The relationship between ethics and returns is more nuanced than the marketing suggests. See our data-driven analysis of whether ethical investing makes money.
Start Now
Most people assume their investments are fine because they have never checked. The most widely held stocks in the world -- the ones sitting in nearly every index fund -- carry documented records on worker treatment, environmental impact, data privacy, and more.
The distance between your values and your portfolio is measurable. Once you measure it, you can decide what to do about it.
Audit My Portfolio | Search Any Company
How We Score
All scores are derived from independent evidence -- penalty records, court outcomes, verified reporting, and third-party audits. No corporate self-assessments. Learn more about our methodology.
For Financial Advisors
Need to document that client ethical preferences have been assessed? Mashinii provides portfolio-level scoring with cited sources for Consumer Duty compliance. Explore the advisor solution.
Mashinii provides integrity data for informational purposes. This is not financial advice.