Ethics and the Consultant: Facing ethical issues with clients, billing and business opportunities in your consulting practice.
On January 29, 2012, I gave a 1 hour lecture presentation on the above subject for Entrepreneur-in—Residence Eric Molander’ s class in the Department of Strategy and Innovation to MBA candidates at the School of Management, Boston University. The presentation covered various ethical issues consultants face in their work including:
- Consultant duties of loyalty to the client and the testing of such loyalty in balancing to satisfy a diverse clientele;
- Conflict of interest with work and business opportunities, issues of disclosure, waivers and appropriate resolution of such conflicts;
- Consultant’s duty of zeal in the interest of clients – best efforts regardless of obstacles, informing the client’s judgment and honoring client’s decisions
- Taking stock or options as all or part of your pay – positive and negative aspects, alignment of interests, and “thinking out of the box” in working for startups
- Treating Clients right is always good business – regardless of size or project
For this class, I also added a special section of Confidentiality with a discussion of the Galleon Case and Rajat Gupta, a notorious 2010-2011 Federal prosecution of flagrant leakage of client confidential information and insider trading.
For information on Prof. Molander and his classes at BU’s School of Management, LINKs: http://www.linkedin.com/in/erikmolander
http://www.mentorcappartners.com/erik-molander.php
http://smgapps.bu.edu/mgmt_new/profiles/MolanderErik.html#resInterests
For my Slides, LINK: http://robadelson.wordpress.com/2011/06/06/ethics-and-the-consultant/
If you are consultant or contractor and have questions or need assistance on a client contract or any of these or other issues in your business, please let me know.
