PMWT Viewpoints - August 2006

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Professional Ethics: How Does One Know What is Ethically Right?

by Rebecca Winston, J.D., PMP

Ethics was once explained to me as doing what may not feel good, may not be in your best interest, and may not appear to be the overall organizationally advantageous act, but must be done for the greater good.  In other words, doing the ethically proper thing may not be without consequences.  In the dictionary it is defined to be, “[T]he discipline dealing with what is good and bad and with moral duty and obligation.”  (Merriam-Webster, 2005)  What none of these statements mentions is that ethics can be geographic, situational, religion based, relational, and chronological to name a few influences.  It has often been said to be individualistic.  So given these parameters are there any universals regarding ethics?

When it comes to project management or the business of conducting project management in a global business community, the answer is the complex “yes and no”.  The Project Management Institute has struggled with this issue for several years and has promulgated several versions.  The legal system in many global jurisdictions has attempted to answer the question for several situations.  For instance, it is almost universal that one cannot cause harm to the bottom-line intentionally for the various stakeholders in an entity or to risk an entities financial future.  But laws or the realm of legal decisions cannot and does not dictate all ethics.  Whole bodies of ethics are based within the morals and values of various groupings of people and circumstances.  Again, one is faced with the situational of who, what, when, where, why, and how. 

The world of project management in which most of us practice exists within the business environment.  The ethical questions we face range from practical, narrowly defined issues, such as our obligation as project managers to be honest with our customers and suppliers, to broader social and philosophical questions.  Those broader questions we face may be our responsibility to protect the environment and team member rights and in some cases privileges.

In some ways, it can seem that ethics force one into a balancing act with the project ends in one bin and the means to achieve those in the other.  Project managers find themselves balancing the ideal against the practical in the world of business transaction in which the project is being conducted.  For example, the need to continue with an imposed schedule even though the safety of performers could be potentially at risk.  From a distance, the ethical issue may seem easy to resolve, but in the moment with the various pressures of business the ethical issues are filled with professional peril, trade-offs, and project risk.

How we determine to proceed is often determined by the global and diversified nature of the businesses with which we do business or are employed.  Other determinative factors are our value system, our moral foundation, and the governing legal system.  With all these determining factors, how can one make the “right” decision?  Are there gradients of the “right” decision?  Is there a ‘should be’, ‘must be’, or ‘is’ situational profile from which to choose?  Again, the answer is more definitive if there is a governing body of law, but where there is none many ethical decisions are made in reliance upon one’s own values and morals. Those are formed based upon a life of experiences, training and education, professional codes, and one’s relation to those impacted.  Raymond Chandler (1888–1959), U.S. author. Letter, May 13, 1949, to publisher Hamish Hamilton, once noted that the business ethics in the United States had become so flexible that, “Such is the brutalization of commercial ethics in this country that no one can feel anything more delicate than the velvet touch of a soft buck.”  Those of us practicing our profession of project management must judge whether this statement continues to be true. 

As we face the numerous ethical decisions in our daily practice, we must use the metrics we have established for ourselves; those metrics of the society in which we practice or from which we have adopted; those metrics of the legal environment in which we are practicing; as well as the penumbra of other considerations that we choose to have impact our decisions.  There are no easy answers for what is ethical.  We can answer questions such as what is mandated by our contracts, our project plans, company procedures and policies, but what is ethical is a blend of many considerations that can be as unique as each of us.  Having said that, one will be judged by those decisions, so weigh and re-weigh before making a decision.

Rebecca Winston, J.D., PMP
PMI Fellow
Former Chair of the Board of Directors of PMI
Independent Project Management Consultant
Idaho, USA


Rebecca Winston Rebecca Winston, Esq. Active in PMI since 1993, Rebecca Winston helped pioneer PMI's Specific Interest Groups (SIGs), including the Project Earth and Government SIGs, the latter of which she was a founding member. She also initiated the SIGs involvement with the PMI Board of Directors, and was founder and first co-chair of Women in Project Management. Winston currently serves as a consultant to organizations such as the National Nuclear Security Administration, Department of Energy and the Department of Homeland Security on topics ranging from Program and Project Management to project reviews and assistance in risk management and vulnerability assessments. Rebecca served on the PMI board of directors during 1998-2002, served as Chair of the PMI board in 2002, and was elected a Fellow of PMI in 2005.”

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