Question

Topic 11c: Ethical Decision Making

Describe an instance, either from personal knowledge or case studies, where a project manager was faced with making a decision in conflict with personal or professional ethical perspectives. Include a discussion of the impacts of the decision on the project and the project manager.

Answer 1

Ethical accountabilities of a project manager should be clear to avoid conflict of interest. A well trained and certified project manager is also duty bound to do whatever is in the best interest of the project at all times. In some instances, we find project managers who are otherwise on the correct side of the guidelines display one or more of the following issues where they are not pulling their weight on projects, allowing them to drift, abdicating all responsibility to the sponsors and senior managers and even accepting their brief as doing only coordination and clerical work, not really driving projects.

Projects have an important impact on companies and project reports are often as important as accounting statements that depict the financial health of an organization.I believe the project manager's professional responsibility should be to establish the standards and constraints of reporting and let their team know in advance. For instance, a 17% schedule slippage means a project status automatically becomes red. This is not just a best practice but an ethical responsibility. Additionally a project manager is ethically bound to accept responsibility for a project’s success or failure and to ask for authority before signing off up for a project prior to the coordination of the work.