Project Ethics: The Promise and the Reality

Gerald O. Sablo, Jr., BS, MS
2017 North America Recipient

The journey to project management excellence is fraught with dangers of all types. Traveling between Scylla and Charybdis, project managers must navigate carefully or else project success can easily become a lost opportunity. This paper is a fictional case study consisting of four vignettes of how Contract Project Management, Inc., trained in the Project Management Institute’s Code of Ethics and Professional Conduct, deals with a variety of questionable ethical behaviors found on one particular project undertaken by contract. The Code's aspirational and mandatory sections for Responsibility, Respect, Fairness, and Honesty present a modern-day document designed to overcome ethical monsters found lurking everywhere. Group Five maintains that, with specific training in the Code, project managers and their teams can avoid and bypass such ever-present ethical unattractiveness, while simultaneously providing a sterling example of positive ethical behavior capable of being emulated.