PMI Code of Ethics and Professional

Conduct
Presented by: Dale McMillen

PMI Montgomery County Chapter

October 7, 2009

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 Goals for this evening

 Understand the place of ethics in the

workplace.
 Review the development and goals of the
PMI Code (“PMI Code”) of Ethics and
Professional Responsibility.
 Review some of the PMI Code itself
 Examine the place of the PMI Code in the
broader world of other Ethics Codes

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 Interesting Ethics Code Timeline from
Google

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 Examples of some other codes

 Hypocratic - 4th Century BC

 Pharmaceutical Code - 1852
 Current Funeral Ethics Code
 Computer Professionals Code
 Dungeons and Dragons from 1995

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 The Ten Commandments of Computer
Ethics (Written by the Computer Ethics Institute )

 Thou shalt not use a computer to harm other people.

 Thou shalt not interfere with other people's computer work.
 Thou shalt not snoop around in other people's computer files.
 Thou shalt not use a computer to steal.
 Thou shalt not use a computer to bear false witness.
 Thou shalt not copy or use proprietary software for which you have
not paid.
 Thou shalt not use other people's computer resources without
authorization or proper compensation.
 Thou shalt not appropriate other people's intellectual output.
 Thou shalt think about the social consequences of the program you
are writing or the system you are designing.
 Thou shalt always use a computer in ways that ensure consideration
and respect for your fellow humans.

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 Dungeons and Dragons

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 Current State of Ethical Codes
(From Ethics Resource Center – ethics.org)

 National Business Ethics Survey

 National Nonprofit Ethics Survey
 National Government Ethics Survey

All Surveys from 2007

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 A little philosophical discussion

 Leadership
 Community
 Implications for Project Managers
 Competing Demands make ethical decisions
difficult (like the triple constraint)

(reference: Ethics, The Heart of Leadership by

Joanne B. Ciulla)

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 Conflict between PMBOK and The
Code???

 How do we reconcile ethics with our daily

work-a-day world?
 Maybe a little confusion between the PMBOK
and The Code?
 What is the way forward?

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 Mapping The Code to the PMBOK
Knowledge Areas

Knowledge
Areas The Code
Integration
Scope Responsibility
Time
Cost
Respect
Quality
Human Resource
Fairness
Communications
Risk
Honest
10 Procurement
 RESPONSIBILITY

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 RESPECT

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 FAIRNESS

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 HONESTY

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 Concluding thoughts

 Project Management is about relationships

and relationships are about ethics
 Project Managers are concerned about their
professional reputation
 Project Managers want to be known as
“Good People”

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 References (page 1)
 PMBOK 3rd and 4th Edition
 PMI Code of Ethics and Professional Responsibility, October 2006
 Modern Ethics, Article in PM Network, January 2007 (also on PMI
web site)
 Addressing Tough Ethical Issues Through Ethical Analysis, Article on
PMI Today, December 2008 (also on PMI web site)
 The Ethical Enterprise: Doing the Right Things in The Right Ways,
Today and Tomorrow : A Global Study of Business Ethics 2005-2015
by Jay J. Jamrog American Management Association/Human
Resources Institute © 2006
 Ethics in Business: Ethics are Increasingly Important for
Corporations by Anne Lindberg American Management
Association/Human Resources Institute © 2006

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 References (page 2)
 Ethics, the Heart of Leadership by Joanne B. Ciulla (ed) Praeger
Publishers © 1998
 Harvard Business Review on Corporate Ethics by Harvard Business
School Publishing Harvard Business Press © 2003
 Web Site of the Illinois Institute of Technlogy, Center for the Study of
Ethics in the Professions (http://ethics.iit.edu). (For large amount of
comparative information and over 2000 codes of ethics in their catalog).
 Web site of Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility
(http://cpsr.org/issues/ethics/cei/)
 Web Site of the Ethics Resource Center (http://www.ethics.org/).
(Which contains a large amount of information, include the three studies
of the state of ethics in Business, Non-Profit and Government.)
 Web Site with the 1995 version of the Dungeons and Dragons Code of
Ethics (
http://www.complang.tuwien.ac.at/alex/rec.games.frp.dnd/TSR-Ethics

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