Ethics Bistro

Why sometimes, good people are found lying? 

It is a very pertinent question because of the general assumption that liars are not good people, and that everyone must tell the truth at all times. This is what we learned during our school daysor even earlier and continue to believe till today. Despite this fairly universal belief, we sometimes find good people lying and find ourselves thinking that it might be fine to do so.

Good people sometimes tell lies to people they care about. In many cultures, we are told about the selfless mother who tells her kids she is not hungry so the children get a higher share of food. Also, we often read about leaders telling their staff they are doing a great job to keep them motivated despite knowing well that the work done is far from being great. We have all learned about entrepreneurs who are warding off bankruptcy but keep telling their buyers that business is good and can get even better in days or weeks to come. We salute the veterans who were captured and tortured to divulge positions of their platoon mates but misled the captors. Many of us “fake it till we make it” often lying to our own-selves to improve our prospects of success. 

So the mother who is in fact hungry but sacrifices her own needs for her children, leaders who are trying to keep their staff motivated to keep trying, entrepreneurs who are taking great personal risks to generate money just enough to pay salaries, the officer relying on deception to protect his soldiers, people who keep themselves energized through fantasies of being on the right track – actually telling lies? If these people are indeedtelling lies, how do we treat such false assertions? Is this type oflying good or bad?

It seems there are lies which are told for personal gains and lies which are told to protect others from harm. I have always advocated the universal belief that lying is unethical under any circumstances, but I also wonder why well respected people are found telling lies. Your thoughts on this seemingly controversial question are welcome.

By Dr. Valerie Denney,  EMAG member

In this blog, I encourage you to comment on this hypothetical, but realistic case, that describes a program that had an apparent miraculous recovery.

Trust and ethics…. Two powerful, yet common words.  Do we just use the words as slogans without stopping to think about what they really mean?

“Trust, but verify.”

“In God we trust.”

“Got ethics?”

Let’s begin with a simple definition for ethics:  the rules of conduct for a particular culture or group. Using a thesaurus yields words such as integrity, morality, honesty, and conscience. For trust, let’s use reliance on the ability, integrity, and surety of an individual or institution.

Covey, in his bestseller, The Speed of Trust, describes trust with all stakeholders as a key leadership competency. Project managers, as with other leaders, build trust by the manner in which they make ethical decisions- those which make the best possible choices while working within the constraints and expectations of the environment. Leadership is inextricability linked with ethical choices.

As project and program managers, we have an obligation to comply with the PMI Code of Ethics and Professional Conduct. The code embraces four global project management community values including responsibility, respect, fairness, and honesty. In context to this topic, respect is our duty to show a high regard to ourselves, others, and the resources entrusted to us. Honesty is our duty to understand the truth and act in a truthful manner in all that we do.

Consider the following situation with respect to ethics and trust.

You are the program manager of a high technology contract that has significant risk. There were a number of bumps on the program in the first 9 months including key personal issues, supplier problems, design errors, and late contract deliverables.  Since then, everything seems to be going well… at least according to your chief engineer.  Apparently program recoveries can come true!

You haven’t heard of any significant problems since this new chief engineer came to the program 5 months ago.  In fact, the weekly test metrics are excellent and far better than they were 4 months ago.  According to last week’s report, we are meeting, and in some places exceeding, the test completion plan. 

Last week a government auditor was at our facility for the annual review of the program. She and the chief engineer are good friends and served in the military together.  They go back at least 15 years. As friends, the chief engineer and the auditor went for an evening on the town. The chief engineer bragged “I have found a foolproof way of keeping the program on track.  All I need to do is estimate the results of the simple tests. I am positive everything works so actually I am being efficient and saving time and money.” The auditor gave a puzzled look, but continued the reunion that evening.

The next day, the auditor continued the review and stumbled across some problems with the way the test data was recorded.  Some of the detailed evidence seems to be missing.  A few days later, the auditor meets with you, and reveals a number of deficiencies, including issues with the test reporting.

You are shocked. How is this possible? There must be some mistake.  The chief engineer assured you that everything was great and you believed it to be true.

You meet with the chief engineer for clarification. The chief admits that there have been shortcuts, “but only on the tests that don’t really matter.  We all know those simple tests work, so why waste our time and money on a formality?”

The meeting ends abruptly. You trusted the chief engineer to be a leader and a technical expert?  You ask yourself “how could this happen?”

What action(s)  would you take now?

What lesson(s) can we take from this scenario so we don’t encounter similar situations in the future?

In the end, performing ethically allows us to execute projects and programs successfully while acting in a manner which is consistent with our personal, company, and professional associations. Simply stated O’Brochta (2016) wrote that “ethics lead to trust, which leads to leadership, which in turn leads to project success.” This hypothetical case allows us to continue to explore this statement.

For more ethical resources please visit: https://www.pmi.org/about/ethics.

O'Brochta, M. (2016). Why project ethics matter: Leadership is built on trust. If the foundation is cracked, a project's future is in doubt. PM Network, 30(1), 29.

Julio and Martin were best friends in graduate school. Since then, their careers had taken them to many cities around the world. They now worked in the same city and shared the same profession, project management.

The duo would often meet for lunch every few weeks at their favorite Italian bistro. Over these lunches, they readily shared their personal and work experiences.

This week, Julio sensed that something was bothering Martin. Even over the phone in the past weeks, Martin had not been his cheerful self.

Julio asked, “What’s up buddy? You’ve seemed out of sorts for some time now.”

Martin was indeed troubled and badly wanted to talk. Julio was the one person he could really trust. He said, “You’re right. I’m having a tough time. My customer doesn’t trust me. Even worse, my team members seem to hate me. I’m under attack on several fronts!”

In an empathetic tone, Julio said: “That’s tough. Tell me more.”

“In my latest customer status report, I didn’t disclose a delay with a critical work package. A key AutoCAD expert suddenly fell sick. I didn’t want to panic my customer since I was sure we could catch up before the next report. The status column had a green icon when it should’ve been yellow. The AutoCAD guy didn’t recover in time. The work got further delayed. Someone from my team told the client that I was misrepresenting progress. My customer now questions every minor detail in my reports!”

Martin paused to sip his drink and continued: “I’m terribly understaffed and behind schedule. There’s no option but to drive my team very hard. I’m often rude, sometimes even mean. On Wednesday last week, I overheard two team members say that I was the worst boss they ever had. My woes seem endless!”

Julio realized that the situation was worse than what he had originally assumed. He reassuringly said, “I’d feel the same way if I was in your place. I’m very sure we can work this out.

“You know me. I don’t sermonize, but it’s obvious that you have a serious trust issue with your client. I too have made the same mistakes of reporting inaccurate progress. While each seemed like a small untruth, they soon cascaded and resulted in broken trust.

“I quickly realized that it's better to be completely honest with stakeholders. But don’t just go to them with issues. Explain your plan to get back on track. Believe me: They start to trust and respect you.”

Julio recalled a leadership workshop where the trainer had spoken about the importance of project managers being completely transparent and respectful to all stakeholders. He had referred to PMI’s Code of Ethics and Professional Conduct¹ which stressed four important values: responsibility, respect, fairness, and honesty.

“Pushing your team members overly hard plus being rude and mean to them may fetch short-term results. In the long run, many team members may push back or quit. You will lose valuable time in finding and training new personnel.

“Take responsibility for your behavior. Don’t blame the schedule. Invest time in team building. Explain the challenges of your tight schedule and request their help. You’ll get their buy-in and better results!”

Martin thanked Julio for his practical advice.

Now that he had a way out of his troubles, his favorite lasagna seemed to taste so much better!

¹ https://www.pmi.org/about/ethics/code

A.I. and I (semi-serious thoughts on artificial intelligence, project management and ethics)

by Giusi Meloni, PMP, CSM, past EMAG Chair

My new microwave has arrived. It asks me whether I would like to cook or defrost and what type of food I’m preparing. It offers me an option to set time and temperature but it also comfortingly suggests that, should I provide more information, it can plan the meal to be ready when and how I want it, don’t you worry.

It happily chirps when it is half done and celebrates with a festive jingle to inform me that the food is ready. Furthermore, it takes a little time to cool off before it starts a new meal… or should I write project?

The analogy with project management, and good project management, is quite strong, I do think. Planning, monitoring, controlling, even lessons learned at the end. And communications throughout.

In a recent interview Jack Ma, founder and president of Alibaba, said that when it comes to tasks like calculation, machines will always "do better”. Coming from a strong humanities background, I certainly agree and appreciate the opportunity to delegate calculations to more proficient humans or machines. While I fluctuate from mildly curious to fascinated on “how” it is done, I recently focused my attention on “what” is being processed, namely the data we humans willingly feed to the machines. 

I will not enter here the discussion on our unwilling and/or unaware contribution to big data and concentrate instead on the project environment. 

Let’s go back to my new microwave: its “planning” functions are based on the assumptions that we humans know what we want, that we give the necessary answers and the answers we give are correct. My microwave “assumes” my competence and honesty. 

Can you assume the same of your project stakeholders? 

If not, even the most sophisticated and “intelligent” tool for data gathering and analysis might not be enough. My microwave and its gently probing questions is an ordinary example of how A.I. might exploit some of the most common project management tools to acquire and manage project information. Knowledge management models also offer various techniques to elicit knowledge and share it, which might be enhanced by A.I.  Tools, however, are only tools: the magic ingredient, the “difference that makes the difference” is how they are used. 

Arthur C. Clarke, the science fiction author of 2001: A Space Odyssey, wrote: “Whether we are based on carbon or on silicon makes no fundamental difference; we should each be treated with appropriate respect.” 

Respect is one of the four tenets of the PMI Code of Ethics and Professional Conduct and it is defined as “our duty to show a high regard for ourselves, others, and the resources entrusted to us. Resources entrusted to us may include people, money, reputation, the safety of others, and natural or environmental resources.”

The Code continues specifying “An environment of respect engenders trust, confidence, and performance excellence by fostering mutual cooperation - an environment where diverse perspectives and views are encouraged and valued.”

It is our behaviour, the example we set as project managers that will make the greatest difference in a project, not only the tool we choose but the choices we make in our daily activities.

We always have a choice between nurturing respect… or not: to ask - or not - the extra question that might clarify the stakeholders' expectation; to stop – or not – a rumour; to make - or not -  a nasty remark during a meeting; to listen - or not - to different points of view. 

We also have a choice on how we want to relate to A.I. In 1997 World chess champion Garry Kasparov lost a game against Deep Blue, an IBM supercomputer. In an interesting Ted Talk, he reflects on A.I. and concludes: “We should not worry about what our machines can do today. Instead, we should worry about what they still cannot do today, because we will need the help of the new, intelligent machines to turn our grandest dreams into reality (…) Our humanity is not defined by any skill, like swinging a hammer or even playing chess. there's one thing only a human can do. That's dream. So let us dream big.”

The Project Managers who wrote the PMI Code of Ethics and Professional Conduct expressed the vision that “this Code will ultimately be used to build upon and evolve our profession”. 

Let us act to make this vision true.

How much cheating can be allowed to win? Is it important to cheat to win or is it ok to lose but not to cheat?

Some of us face some of these questions when either we as leaders take any decision or we follow leader who says winning come before the virtue and values.

During the recent ball tampering episode happened in South Africa followed by serious admissions and long term bans, one of the questions come up very strongly is that how come no one from the 11 people of the team said ‘No’ to cheat when it was tabled.  

Are we becoming so blind followers to our leaders that we don’t apply our own values, learnings to say that – Hey, this looks wrong, something doesn’t seem right here and we should stop, I think we are making the error of judgement. How many times we have found ourselves in the situations where our senior leaders, Famous personalities are asking us to do something and we doubt it?

Of course it is easier to say that it’s all part of the culture where winning comes before values and virtues. So what if it’s only a game but a loss if not tolerated and ‘winning is everything’ rather than ‘winning honorably’. The cricket team in question here of course resorted to many other ways in past like sledging, over the top celebration, aggressive send-off in the past which were considered acceptable in the light of law and hence ball tampering seems to be a little further extension in order to win.

This is the problem with small cheating and it is often found that people tend to forget the line very easily when small becomes large and so large that it completely destroyed their career and image which they have earned hard ways.        

Making the right choice and understanding that what we are planning to do is not right becomes very complicated, especially when everything is a matter of just few degrees.

This was a the true test of leadership where as a leader, you have to show trust on to your team, find ways to success by inspiring the team in the event of loss and improve so that team can return to the winning ways. The true leader knows the line and always plays by the rules even if it means loss.

What Australian captain did was certainly not traits of the true leader. True leaders don’t ask their team members to cheat and they don’t succumb to the pressure of losing so much so that cheating looks last resort. He was thinking that whatever he will do is the acceptable actions and they are the ones who decide the line. Unfortunately it wasn’t so.   

Good leaders don’t cheat and they don’t lose faith in their team and never ceases to try to find ways to succeed. They inspire the team to come out of negativity, they support, help their team to be more positive and productive rather than slumping down to cheat or cut corners.

Needless to say that having ethics is vital because not only it’s based on truth, virtue and righteousness, but true leader also show light to others, guide the team the right way to behave and act.

To conclude, cheating small or big is absolute no-no and focus should be on winning righteously and honorably rather than just winning at any cost.

For more ethical resources please visit: https://www.pmi.org/about/ethics