“Discuss an ethical dilemma that you experienced firsthand. How did you manage and resolve the situation?” I was one of two consultants who conducted an independent assessment for a major financial services company. We were sponsored by its IT organization to assess the alignment of IT services to the various divisions and geographic locations of the business. During our assessment, we met with fifty of the top business leaders across four countries, including the CFO and CIO. We solicited their ideas for improvement and performed a statistical analysis of the results. When we shared the analysis with IT leadership, they asked us to remove some of the findings that reflected poorly upon their management practices before we reported the results to the business leaders. I was one of two consultants who conducted an independent assessment for a major financial services company. We were sponsored by its IT organization to assess the alignment of IT services to the various divisions and geographic locations of the business. During our assessment, we met with fifty of the top business leaders across four countries, including the CFO and CIO. We solicited their ideas for improvement and performed a statistical analysis of the results. When we shared the analysis with IT leadership, they asked us to remove some of the findings that reflected poorly upon their management practices before we reported the results to the business leaders. Our dilemma was whether to report our independent finds to the business leaders against the wishes of IT leadership ( who included our project sponsor) or to heed their request and dilute the findings. On the on hand, we reported to our project sponsor who paid our consulting fees and was our main contact at the company. On the other hand, we risked jeopardizing our credibility with the leaders who had shared politically risky examples with us because they viewed the “ independent” assessment as a vehicle for bringing about meaningful changes in the organization. In order to address this dilemma, my colleague and I met to consider our options. Our reflection yielded one conclusion with two potential solutions. We concluded that all parties included in the assessment deserved to know the true findings of our study. As a result, we needed to either convince our sponsor that it was in his best interests to share the complete findings or find a way to show the limitations of the report’s independence without alienating him. Ultimately, both solutions were necessary. During meetings with our sponsor, we pointed out that the business leaders would clearly identify the withholdings, which would compromise IT’s credibility. We also noted that omitting results would contradict the assessment’s goal of binging about constructive changes. Our sponsor accepted the validity of our arguments and reduced the number of omissions. However, since full disclosure was not an option for the IT organization, we also worked collaboratively with our sponsor to include a section in the presentation about the process used to conduct the assessment that clearly identified the input that IT leadership had to the results. This approach was ultimately satisfactory to IT leadership. It also provided the necessary flag to alert the business leaders to the withholding from our final presentation.
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