![](https://psasecurity.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/Committees-Logos-RGB_Project-Mgmt-Committee.jpg)
The Ethics of Project Management
April 22, 2016
![Robert Flynn_113X113](https://psasecurity.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/Robert-Flynn_113X113.jpg)
As project managers, we are the front-line, client-facing, rubber-meets-the road leaders of a project, and we have a commitment to hold ourselves, peers, and subordinates accountable to ethical project management conduct at all times.
The role of a project manager requires a multitude of decisions, actions, and communications with varying degrees of conflicting interests and risks. So how can project managers uphold their values and maintain high ethical standards at all times?
- Honesty
- Always seek and speak the truth.
- Make commitments and keep them.
- Do not engage in or condone dishonesty.
- Collaborative
- Keep your clients and all of your project stakeholders informed at all times.
- Listen to all stakeholders internal, external and including our sales staff.
- Accountable
- Accountable to monthly revenue and billing targets established by your employer.
- Accountable to the on-time project schedule and contractual deadlines.
- Accountable to the project plan and functionality of the systems that you are installing.
- Accountable to the client in keeping them informed about all aspects of their project.
- Accountable to your employer in getting what they are paying for in you as their employee.
- Accountable to the project costs and keeping them within 5% of the estimated costs.
- Responsibility
- Take the best action for a specific situation.
- Take action supported by knowledge.
- Fulfill project and professional requirements of your position at all times.
- Protect sensitive information of our company and our clients (we are a security company).
- Stay compliant with all applicable laws, regulations and building codes based on the region of the project.
- Respect
- Address conflict as soon as it happens.
- Behave professionally at all times.
- Negotiate in good faith with clients, subcontractors, suppliers and your internal team.
- Never act abusively.
- Respect others’ property rights.
- Demonstrate fairness at all times.
- Provide equal access to information.
- Provide equal opportunity when acquiring resources.
- Act fairly when hiring, do not base decisions on personal considerations.
- Do not discriminate.
- Be impartial.
- Cultural Respect
- Be aware of cultural differences.
- Learn and understand culture when in a new region.
- Respect other cultures' ways of behavior and moral interpretations.
- Maintain professional sensitivity when dealing with other cultures.
- Practice cultural awareness in all situations.
- Many professional responsibility questions can be answered simply by using common sense. The best choice is to choose to do the ethical thing.
Project Management Cynicism
![And Dilbert, projects need coffee](https://psasecurity.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/Dilbert.jpg)
And Dilbert, projects need coffee
- Projects with realistic budgets and timetables don't get approved.
- The more desperate the situation the more optimistic the progress report.
- A user is somebody who rejects the system because it's what he asked for.
- The difference between project success and failure is a good PR company.
- Nothing is impossible for the person who doesn't have to do it.
- Every failing, overly ambitious project, has at its heart a series of successful small ones trying to escape.
- A freeze on change melts whenever heat is applied.
- You understood what I said, not what I meant.
- If you don't know where you're going, just talk about specifics.
- If at first you don't succeed, rename the project.
- Everyone wants a strong project manager - until they get him.
- Only idiots own up to what they really know (thank you to President Nixon).
- The worst project managers sleep at night.
- A failing project has benefits which are always spoken of in the future tense.
- Projects don't fail in the end; they fail at conception.
- Visions are usually treatable.
- Overly ambitious projects can never fail if they have a beginning, middle and no end.
- In government we never punish error, only its disclosure.
- The most difficult way is, in the long run, the easiest.
- A realist is one who's presciently disappointed in the future.