Ethical Decision Making for Project Managers

Someone recently posted a comment to my last blog post about the top 20 topics in IT.  This person pointed out the importance of ethics as a topic and how ethics related to many of the topics I listed.  This is correct, ethics is an important topic within the IT field as well as most (if not all) other fields.

Today I came across an ethical decision making framework published by the Project Management Institute.  This framework is used to define a process to help project managers make decisions when confronted with dilemma.  The framework is provided to help project managers act in a manner consistent with the Code of Ethics and Professional Conduct.  Although the framework is published in the context of project management, it can also be applied to other professions where ethical decision making is needed.

The PMI framework is very similar to other ethical decision frameworks I have seen in that it encourages decision makers to identify and evaluate potential decisions.  However, there is one step I see missing from this framework.  The decision maker must also reflect back on a decision to evaluate the results of the decision.  This reflection serves as a feedback loop to better improve decision making in the future.  Without the reflective feedback loop we may end up repeating poor decisions.