Question

Imagine you are a project manager and a member of the Project Management Institute (PMI). Alexia is a friend and colleague who works in the training department. She comes to you for advice about a potential ethical dilemma. Alexia is not a project manager or a member of PMI. She is a member of a team that is creating a training program for new sales people. This training program will consist of in-house training and online technical training.

The team is about to search for companies to purchase or create the online technical training needed. Alexia has been in the industry for many years and is an expert in the field. Given her experience, the project manager has asked Alexia to lead the team to define the requirements and come up with a list of vendors. Alexia knows the vendors in this field, she worked for one of them for 10 years, and she is still close with many of the employees.

Alexia’s sister is also in the industry; in fact, she is the local sales manager for a training company that will be a top contender for the job. Since Alexia has a family member and friends who work for two of the potential vendors, she has two potential conflicts of interest and has asked for your help in how to ethically navigate this situation. When she leaves your office, you pull out the PMI Code of Ethics and Professional Conduct (Links to an external site.)Links to an external site. and the ethical decision making framework provided in the Weekly Lecture.

What potential ethical violations exist? Share at least three potential recommendations for navigating the potential ethical violations, and walk through the ethical decision making framework to show your thought process. What is your final recommendation? Why?

Answer 1

What potential ethical violations exist?

The ethical violation that exists in the above mentioned scenario, is the principle of fairness, including favoritism & discrimination. The rule states that hiring/ firing, rewarding/ punishing and awarding or denying contracts is strictly prohibited on the basis of favoritism, bribery or nepotism.

Three potential recommendations:

• Making a list of all the vendors highlighting the positive and negative points of all vendors irrespective of her sister or relatives being part of the vendor company, and selecting the best vendor.
• In order to act ethically, not hiding the fact that your relatives work in vendor companies and letting the top managers make the decision on awarding or not awarding the contracts to them.
• Measuring the previous performance and work doing capability of all the vendors irrespective of where your relatives work, then making comparison and awarding the contract to the one with maximum experience and best work done in past projects.

Final recommendation:

My final recommendation would be to Measure the previous performance and work doing capability of all the vendors irrespective of where your relatives work, then making comparison and awarding the contract to the one with maximum experience and best work done in past projects. This would not harm any ethical values and will be a fair act by considering all vendors equally on the basis of their past performance and experience.