As a professional consulting firm providing services to businesses and other organizations, we commit to supporting and acting within the following guidelines:
- Accept responsibility for the consequences of our acts and make every effort to ensure that our services are properly used.
- Recognize the limits of our competence and capabilities and refer clients to other professionals, or work with other professionals, when appropriate.
- Strive to attain and maintain a professional level of competence in our fields of expertise through on-going education, training and inquiry.
- Strive continually for self-knowledge and personal growth and be aware that our values, beliefs and aspirations are primary determinants of our own perceptions and behavior.
- Attempt to serve the short- term and long-term welfare, interests, and development of clients and stakeholders.
- Discuss candidly and fully goals, costs, risks limitations and anticipated outcomes of our services, and fully inform client members about our role, contribution, and strategy in working with them.
- Work collaboratively with other internal and external consultants serving the same client and resolve conflicts in terms of balanced best interests of client and stakeholders.
- Encourage and enable our clients to provide for themselves the services we provide, rather than foster continued reliance on us.
- Cease work with a client, or change the scope of the relationship, when it is clear that the client is not benefiting from the relationship as structured.
- Avoid conflicts of interest and disclose situations and/or circumstances that might give rise to conflicts of interest, perceived or otherwise.
- Define and protect the confidentiality of our client-professional relationships.
- Establish mutual agreement on written contract covering scope of services and remuneration.
- Safeguard the best interests of the client and the public by making sure the financial arrangements are fair and in keeping with appropriate statutes, regulations and professional standards.
- Make public statements of all kinds accurately, including promotion and advertising, and give service as advertised.
- Act with due regard for the needs, special competencies, and obligations of my colleagues and other professionals and the organizations with which they are associated.
- Work actively for the ethical practice by individuals and organizations engaged in servicing our clients, and in case of questionable practice, use appropriate channels for confronting it.
- Strive for the preservation and protection of fundamental human rights and the promotion of social justice.
- Contribute knowledge, skill and other resources in support of organizations, programs, and activities that seek to improve human welfare.
- Respect the cultures, organizations, community, country, or other human systems with which we work.
- Recognize that accepting this statement as a guide for our behavior involves holding ourselves to a standard that may be more exacting that the laws of any country in which we reside.
- Serve the welfare of all the people of Earth, all living things, and their environment.
* Note: Adapted, in part, from the Ethical Guidelines for an Organization Development/Human Systems Development Professional as developed by the Human Systems Development Consortium.