The Ethical Dilemma of a Project Manager
From the Ethics Bistro Blog
by Tara Leparulo,
Shenila Shahabuddin, Juan Posada Toro, Yannick Arekion, Albert Agbemenu, Kannan Ganesan, Ming Yeung, Laszlo J. Kremmer MBA, CSPO®, CSM®, PMP®, Stelian ROMAN, Witold Hendrysiak
We all tackle ethical dilemmas. Wrong decisions can break careers. Which are the key challenges faced? What are some likely solutions? Where can we find effective tools? Who can apply these and why? Dry, theoretical discussions don't help. Join us for lively, light conversations to learn, share and grow!
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Ethics and ethical behavior refer to general principles such as honesty, integrity, and morals. Acting ethically is noble and involves greater self-control, discipline, and maturity. Acting ethically is critical in our professional and personal situations. I recently came across a problem as follows.
Mary* was a senior leader in ABC company that dealt with offshoring business processes to companies from other sides of the world. This was done to maintain a strategic advantage for the company and provide 24*7 cover for business operations.
Mary had been a disciplined and dedicated project manager for the company with proper ethical behavior and practices. She exhibited immense integrity in the most challenging times of the project. As a result, she was often cited in meetings for her exemplary behavior.
A recent incident in the organization proved challenging for Mary and her reputation.
Mary was a part of the meeting with senior leadership. The meeting had been called to discuss some crucial scope changes to the existing project. The client representatives had proposed a complex feature to the application. Mary was aware of the existing skillsets of the resources on the project. The change was tricky, and she would need to retrain the existing resources or hire new skill sets. On realizing that this would pose difficulty in delivering the project, Mary quickly pointed this out. She knew she was responsible and accountable for the project.
However, one of the senior leadership members challenged Mary’s concerns and asked her to agree to deliver the complex feature. Mary knew the current status and informed the leader about the situation. The leader, however, was firm in his direction as he knew the feature would help the project and the company.
Mary and her team needed help to deliver the project and struggled while executing it. Due to unsatisfactory deliverables, the client withdrew their support for the project. The leadership summoned Mary to discuss what had happened. Mary put down her papers in the same meeting and resigned immediately.
According to the Project Management Institute’s Code of Ethics and Professional Conduct, the definition of Responsibility is as follows.
2.1 Description of Responsibility
Responsibility is our duty to take ownership of the decisions we make or fail to make, the actions we take or fail to take, and the consequences that result.
Responsibility as a value is described in detail on its aspirational and mandatory standards in The Code.
Did Mary act as per her responsibility? What is the difference between responsibility and accountability? Did Mary adhere to PMI’s Code of Ethics and Professional Conduct?
I would like to know what you think about this situation.
*Name changed to protect privacy
Resources
PMI’s Code of Ethics and Professional Conduct: https://www.pmi.org/-/media/pmi/documents/public/pdf/ethics/pmi-code-of-ethics.pdf?rev=6af21906e5934b638ceeabeb4137f41d&sc_lang_temp=en
PMI’s Code of Ethics and Professional Conduct Value Cards: https://www.pmi.org/-/media/pmi/documents/public/pdf/ethics/code-values-card.pdf?rev=44578e34774241568ce0034489794fe4&sc_lang_temp=en
PMI’s blog on Ethics, “Ethics Bistro”: https://www.projectmanagement.com/blogs/365304/ethics-bistro
Posted
by
Dr. Deepa Bhide
on: March 22, 2023 06:03 AM |
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Comments (10)
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Ming Yeung
Adjunct Professor & Acting COO/CPO/CRO (contract)| Blockchain Venture Capital Inc.
Toronto, Ontario, Canada
Hello Deepa,
It was indeed a dilemma for Mary as she strived to uphold her responsibility as a project manager.
Accountability normally follows after a situation or problem and how someone responds to the issue determines the outcome while responsibility is often project- and task-oriented with an implicit and/or explicit performance or non-performance.
In my view, Mary upheld and adhered to the PMI Code of Ethics and Professional Conduct. The issue was notable and she had acted in a responsible manner, albeit a voluntary loss of employment.
Thank you for the thought-provoking scenario.
Juan Posada Toro
Customer Success Manager| Rockwell Automation
Envigado, Antioquia, Colombia
Hi Deepa, thanks for sharing this blog and bring to the table this dilemma.
From my perspective, Mary adhered to the PMI Code of Ethics and Professional Conduct. She acted responsibly according to the value description.
On the other hand, according to the definition, responsibility refers to someone's duty to carry out a task to completion, while accountability refers to what happens after something has happened.
Hi Deepa,
My thoughts are that Mary did her best to uphold her responsibility of meeting the project objectives given what appears to be a significant scope change. She acted within the Code of Ethics because she raised her concerns regarding successful project delivery to senior leadership.
Where Mary may have come up lacking in this case is that the scope change clearly increased project risk. This increased risk and a determination of whether it was a high medium or low risk to the overall project delivery should have been managed with the other project risks via a risk matrix.
The risks should have been clearly communicated to senior leadership for a final decision as they are ultimately the ones accountable for the success of the project.
Accountability should lie with the leaders making promises to the customers and Mary should have been Responsible for executing the project with a reasonable amount of risk as well as making sure those accountable realize when the risk is too great.
Luis Branco
CEO| Business Insight, Consultores de Gestão, Ldª
Carcavelos, Lisboa, Portugal
Dear Deepa
Analyzing the situation, I am convinced that Mary tendered her resignation a little late.
She implicitly accepted responsibility at the time: "The leader, however, was firm in his direction as he knew the feature would help the project and the company."
Bryan Shelby
Retired| Retired and volunteering, having left "employment" behind!
New York, Ny, United States
I would agree with Edward and Luis. Mary should have made it clear that the deadline was unrealistic given the resources that she had available. She should have considered Section 2.2.2 of the Code of Ethics and Professional Conduct: "We accept only those assignments that are consistent with our background, experience, skills, and qualifications."
In this case, the unfortunate gap was not hers directly but was in the experience, skills, and qualifications of her team. The right thing to do would have been to respectfully inform the senior leader that specific additional resources were essential to be able to meet his directive. Frankly, she did her team a disservice by not pushing back, thereby positioning them for inevitable failure.
I would add that we don't know how the meeting went in which she resigned. If she was being blamed for the failure, I can understand why she resigned because the real failure was the leader's in requiring the impossible, and the organization's failure in supporting the leader over Mary when it was not her fault. On the other hand, if she was being criticized for not being sufficiently vocal about the risk because of the missing skillset, that is legitimate feedback and I would hope that she could take it as such and do better next time.
In my opinion, the ethical lapse here is not Mary's but belongs to the organization. At most, Mary could be criticized for inadequate risk communication, possibly because of toxic (i.e. unrealistically demanding) leadership.
Iruthaya Raj Amal Raj
MEP Project Management Engineer / Senior Procurement Engineer/Senior Estimation| ETTS
Abudhabi, Az, United Arab Emirates
Thank you dear friends for your excellent comments. Ethical dilemmas surround us in all walks of life and its difficult to assess how we should react. I think a lot depends on our unique circumstances which determine our timing, response etc. Thanks again!
Lissa Muncer
Transformation & Portfolio Director| Avanade
United Kingdom
Deepa, this is a very insightful post that depicts complex ethical dilemmas that we are faced with as professionals.
Hi Deepa, thanks for sharing the blog
I think Mary acted in accordance with her responsibility as a project manager. She raised concerns about the feasibility of a complex feature proposed by the client due to the existing skillsets of her team, and she informed the senior leadership about the situation. However, the leader challenged her concerns and directed her to deliver the feature despite the challenges. Mary took ownership of her concerns and informed the leadership about the challenges in delivering the complex feature, fulfilling her responsibility as a project manager.
Accountability, on the other hand, refers to being answerable for the outcomes of one's actions or decisions. In this case, it appears that the senior leadership member who directed Mary to deliver the complex feature despite her concerns was ultimately accountable for the unsatisfactory deliverables and the client's withdrawal of support.
Mary's actions align with the principles of responsibility and integrity as outlined in PMI's Code of Ethics and Professional Conduct. She acted in the best interest of the project and the company by raising her concerns and providing accurate information to the leadership. However, the outcome of the project was not as expected, and Mary made the decision to resign, possibly due to feeling that her professional integrity was compromised. Mary demonstrated responsible behavior by raising concerns and providing accurate information, but in my opinion the final decision and accountability rested with the senior leadership.
Latha Thamma reddi
Sr Product and Portfolio Management (Automation Innovation)| DXC Technology
Mckinney, Tx, United States
Dear Deepa,
Very interesting the theme that brought to our reflection and for debate
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