Ethics Bistro

“Fairness is not an attitude. It's a professional skill that must be developed and exercised – Brit Hume”

In the dynamic world of project management, maintaining fairness and avoiding favoritism and prejudice are crucial for fostering a productive and harmonious work environment. These ethical challenges can significantly impact team morale, project outcomes, and the overall success of an organization. Let’s delve into how fairness, favoritism, and prejudice play out in project management and explore strategies to address these issues effectively.

1. The Importance of Fairness

• Impartial Decision-Making: Fairness in project management involves making decisions impartially and objectively. This means evaluating team members based on their skills, performance, and contributions rather than personal biases or relationships.
• Equal Opportunities: Providing equal opportunities for all team members to participate, contribute, and grow is essential. This includes fair distribution of tasks, recognition, and rewards.

2. The Detrimental Effects of Favoritism

• Resentment and Demotivation: Favoritism can lead to resentment among team members who feel overlooked or undervalued. This can result in decreased motivation and productivity.
• Unbalanced Workload: When certain individuals are favored, it can lead to an unbalanced workload, where some team members are overburdened while others have less to do. This imbalance can affect the overall efficiency of the project.

3. Addressing Prejudice in the Workplace

• Awareness and Training: Raising awareness about unconscious biases and providing training on diversity and inclusion can help mitigate prejudice. This ensures that all team members are treated with respect and fairness.
• Inclusive Culture: Promoting an inclusive culture where diverse perspectives are valued and encouraged can help reduce prejudice. This involves actively listening to and considering the viewpoints of all team members.

4. Strategies for Promoting Fairness

• Transparent Processes: Implementing transparent processes for decision-making, task allocation, and performance evaluation can help ensure fairness. Clear criteria and open communication are key to maintaining transparency.
• Regular Feedback: Providing regular and constructive feedback helps team members understand their strengths and areas for improvement. This fosters a culture of continuous learning and development.

5. Creating a Positive Work Environment

• Recognition and Appreciation: Recognizing and appreciating the efforts and achievements of all team members fosters a positive work environment. This helps build trust and encourages everyone to contribute their best.
• Conflict Resolution: Addressing conflicts promptly and fairly is crucial. Ensuring that all parties are heard and that resolutions are based on facts rather than biases helps maintain a harmonious team dynamic.

Conclusion

Fairness, favoritism, and prejudice are critical issues in project management that can significantly impact team dynamics and project success. By promoting fairness, addressing favoritism, and mitigating prejudice, project managers can create a more inclusive, productive, and positive work environment. This not only enhances team morale but also drives better project outcomes.

Question:

What are your experiences with fairness, favoritism, and prejudice in project management? How have you addressed these challenges in your projects? Share your thoughts and insights!

As an experienced project manager, Victor recently joined a new organization after a five-month break due to layoffs at his previous job. He was hired as a PMO Lead and was eager to make a positive impact on his new team. However, he quickly realized that the team seemed hesitant to trust him, due to his newness to the organization or the time it would take for him to fully engage with them.

Victor took various initiatives to engage with his team, scheduling regular cadence with them to get to know them better. However, he observed that the team was not seeking help when they needed it, and his peers were taking advantage of this situation. This lack of trust was affecting the progress of the team, the projects, and even the customers.

Victor felt conflicted because he wanted to help the team succeed in their projects, but he also wanted to earn their trust and inspire them as their leader. He did not want the team to be affected by negative energies resulting from the trust issues. However, he realized that he was not being honest with the responsibilities assigned to him by the management and was not justifying his role as PMO Lead.

According to the Project Management Institute's Code of Ethics and Professional Conduct, honesty is defined as understanding the truth and acting truthfully in communications and conduct. Victor realized that he was not being honest with himself or the organization, and this was causing him to feel like he was not fulfilling his responsibilities. He considered leaving the organization as he did not want to compromise on his integrity.

At the same time, Victor also realized that he may encounter similar situations in any new workplace, and his lack of confidence in himself may be due to the five-month break he had taken. He did not want to let his peers take advantage of this situation, and he wanted to find a solution that would align with his values and principles as a project manager.

After careful consideration, Victor decided to take the following steps:

1. Communicate openly and transparently with his team: Victor scheduled a team meeting where he shared his observations and concerns with the team. He emphasized his commitment to their success and his willingness to support them in any way possible. He encouraged open and honest communication within the team and set up regular feedback sessions to address any issues or challenges.
2. Build trust through actions: Victor understood that trust is earned over time through consistent actions. He made sure to follow through on his commitments, be transparent in his communication, and be approachable and supportive to his team. He also acknowledged and appreciated the contributions of his team members and recognized their efforts and achievements.
3. Seek feedback and improve: Victor understood that self-reflection and continuous improvement are essential to becoming a better leader. He sought feedback from his team, peers, and mentors, and actively addressed any gaps or areas for improvement. He also invested time in building his confidence and skills through professional development opportunities.
4. Stay true to his values and principles: Victor reminded himself of the importance of honesty, integrity, and professionalism as outlined in PMI's Code of Ethics and Professional Conduct. He made a conscious effort to align his actions with these values and principles and hold himself accountable for his responsibilities as a PMO Lead.

As time passed, Victor noticed a positive change in his team's attitude towards him. They started seeking his guidance and support, and the team's progress improved. Victor regained his confidence as a project manager and felt that he was justifying his role in the organization. He realized that by being honest with himself and others, and upholding his professional values, he could overcome the initial trust issues and create a positive work environment.

"What are your thoughts on how project managers can balance the need to be honest about their challenges while still fulfilling their responsibilities and justifying their role within an organization?"

Ethics and  Governance in Project Management: Small Sins Allowed and the Line of Impunity (Eduardo Victor Lopez and Alicia Medina)

” Ethics must be cardinal to the overall management of any project, instead of merely a peripheral subject”.

 In an era of tremendous growth of project management as an occupation, professional project managers, ready, well-equipped, and capable to deliver successful projects become more and more in demand and a highly-valued commodity. 

For the past few decades there were intense and continue need of continue development of this class of blue collars, for cultivating technical skills along with soft skills, and strong ethics knowledge. This journey supports one’s trip within the complex realm of ethical aspects, with consideration of ramifications that ethics creates for project success.

Eduardo Victor Lopez and Alicia Medina brings their valuable work on ethics to the forefront and attention of project management. The book is an eulogy to the ethics culture in an organization, and to the relationship between ethics, ethical behaviours and governance.

In the ““Ethics and Governance in Project Management” Small Sins Allowed and the Line of Impunity”, the authors engage the reader in a journey on new perspectives on ethics, using a breadth of resources, in a well-documented, and well-researched material.

Lopez and Medina introduce the facets and complexities of ethics by building a parallel exercise with the Rubik Cube. Since its apparition, back in 1974, the Rubik Cube, identified as an eponymous cube, impacted art, design, science, engineering, math; it challenges humankind to explore the intricacies of this unique structure, the different perspectives and views it creates, while seeking innovative way for solving it. This context presents similarities to the project environment and the need for solving ethics problems. “We are of different opinion at different hours, but we always may be said to be at heart on the side of truth.”  This parallel perspective invites the reader to consider out-of-the box, fresh perspectives for ethic situation, and the authors discuss the mindset needed for evaluation of business ethics and its influence, exploring three main key concepts: ethics, context, and governance. 

How important is ethics and governance in project management? “When an ethical component is included in the vision of a project … it can move stakeholders at large to support this visions for reasons beyond those arising only from a financial nexus. The ability to fulfil the project’s social purpose influences its success”. The research conducted by the authors fill the noticed gap, the connection and the dependency between strategy and ethics, as “Most of the publications related to strategic planning throughout 1980s, and early 1990, omitted any mention of ethical and moral trues…” strategy and ethics are considered separate and unrelated matters”.

The novelty of the book is the unique ethical model and the two new ethical behaviours, interdependent to governance and its quality, and the context: Small Sins Allowed defined as “the mechanism that allow individuals to cheat on our own values “just by a bit”, concept defined as the updated socially accepted ethical standards, in the context of double standards, legality, and project culture, and, The Line of Impunity that impact at the individual level, creating a “detachment between business and ethics as many believe themselves as above the moral law”. 

The book’s style, content and format supports scholars and practitioners in nourishing their appetite for ethics knowledge, understanding of origins, linkages, and implications with other research areas. Readers will find the book immediately useful as the examples used are grounded in the reality, with immediate applicability to their day-to-day line of business. The case studies presented and the quizzes create smooth linkages between the topic and their relatedness to the reality. These tools give the book the taste of a well-defined ethics guide that can support equally a practitioner, a novice or a senior project manager. 

An excellent lecture, the book calls project managers to become aware of Small Sins Allowed and The Line of Impunity, build their own Rubik Cube, identify ethical attributes of their cube, and support the creation of an ethical culture embedded in the governance “that rewards ethical behaviour”.