Consulting Journal: Methods - Documenting your ethics

Methods: Documenting your ethics

by David Blakey

Is it necessary for consultants to document their ethical boundaries?

[Monday 25 January 2010]

The issue of ethics in business and in consulting is debated whenever publicity is given to extremely unethical behaviour by a corporation. All consultants have an ethic, a set of morals that they apply to their business. The question for consultants is often how far along the supply chain they need to be to avoid breaking that ethic.

Some US and European corporations have been accused of using child labour or slave labour in south-east and east Asia. Should a consultant work for these corporations?

Draft

The answer depends largely on what the consultant's ethic actually is.

Consultant A:	I shall not work for any client that employs child labour.
Consultant B:	I do not care about the employment policies of my clients.

Your rule may be the same as Consultant A or as Consultant B. In this article, I am not concerned with what your ethical rules are. I am concerned with whether or not you have ethical rules and with whether you have stated them.

Define

Take every word and phrase within your ethical rules and ask yourself what exactly does this mean? With the statement for Consultant A, you should ask the following questions.

work:	does this mean engaged by directly as a consultant?
	what about subcontracting?
client:	is this any office of a multinational company?
	does it include other companies that have a shareholding in the company?
	does it include all subsidiaries?
child labour:	is a child anyone under the age to be employed in my country?
	or the local country?
	or some age established by some other entity, such as the United Nations?

Once you start to ask these questions, other questions arise.

Would you choose not to work for a company that used child actors in its advertising?
Would you choose not to work for a company involved with agriculture, given that children in your own country may work on their parents' farms?
What are the distinctions between a 12 year old working 16 hours a day in a corporate rubber plantation in Liberia and a 12 year old working after school and at weekends in their family's wheat farm in North Dakota?

This should all lead to you being able to make a definitive statement about this ethical rule.

Record

You will be able to record your ethical rules, together with all relevant definitions.

Rule x:	I shall not work for any company that employs child labour.

	company	includes all parent companies and subsidiaries, throughout the world.
		includes subcontractors that receive a substantial volume of their turnover (ie, in excess of 10%) from the company.
	child	means a person under 14 years.
	labour	means employment for more than 2 hours per day for at least 5 days per week.
	child labour	includes employment in which a parent of the child is employed and the child assists the parent to perform his/her duties.

It is important that you do record your rules. If they are only stated verbally, there will be a temptation to re-phrase them to suit circumstances.

Check

It is useful to check with a lawyer that your rules accord with the laws of your country.

It will be difficult to keep to a set of ethical rules that conflict with the law. Whether or not you believe that the law should be changed, you have a business to run.
Your ethical rules may already be incorporated into the laws of your country. You might consider whether it is worthwhile for you to state your ethical rules, given that they may already be mandated. If you are likely to work in other countries, with different laws, you should probably leave your ethical rules in place.

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