1 What is Ethics?

Ethics can be thought of as morals. Ethics are involved in deciding between right and wrong, or between acceptable and unacceptable behaviour. Over the course of history, various ethical
standards have been established, for example, (i) the Hippocratic Oath by which physicians swear to “First of all, do no harm”, (ii) religious guides such as the Ten Commandments, or, (iii)
more colloquially, the Golden Rule to “do unto others as you would have them do unto you”.

Ethics helps us to consider the range of answers to the any number of questions including:

• What do we need?
• What do we value?
• How do we know?
• How do we decide?
• How do we know who gets to decide?
• Who might be harmed or excluded in the execution of this project?

Effectively, “ethics is not about the policies or the roles and the regulations, but the best possible decision you need to take concerning the environment, resources and the people” (Das, 2020).

Project management involves a series of established steps and procedures. There are many key decision points throughout the life of a project from planning, execution, close out, and sustainability. A strong sense of ethics enables project managers and members of project teams to make good decisions and act appropriately when they are presented with grey areas or situations when right vs. wrong is unclear. Good ethical decisions do not normally result in great fanfare apart from contributing to overall project success. Instead, we tend to notice the consequences of ethical failures far more than we celebrate ethical achievements.

In some situations, unethical decisions and negative outcomes may be the result of an accident, they may be inadvertently generated by design and decisions made during project planning and execution, or they may even be purposeful. Designing your project carefully, keeping in consideration your time constraints, stakeholders, budget, steering committees, scope, and risk management, will help reduce opportunity for ethical failures.