When you go to work on a consulting customer’s project, that customer is placing a great deal of trust, not only in your abilities to help resolve a business problem, but also in your resolve to be responsible, especially with the knowledge you acquire about the client organisation’s internal affairs.
This is something I think about a lot, actually. Because there’s a whole subspecialty out there—people who work as an ethics consultant, helping organisations develop codes of conduct, navigate compliance issues, build ethical frameworks. And the irony is that consultants themselves sometimes operate in a kind of ethical grey zone without even realizing it.
I’m not talking about outright dishonesty. Most consultants I’ve met are decent people with good intentions. But the nature of consulting creates situations where ethical lines can blur if you’re not paying attention. You’re an outsider with inside access. You serve multiple clients, sometimes competitors. You bill by the hour but have control over how those hours are counted. The temptations are subtle but real.
If you’re planning to set yourself up as an independent consultant therefore, you should make sure you understand ethical practices in management consulting and commit to your own code of personal ethics, which you will religiously adhere to when working with your customers.
The following four tenets of ethical practice should never be broken if you want to be regarded as a trustworthy consultant, who customers would rehire and recommend to others without hesitation.
1. Be Honest and Responsible About Billable Hours
Never violate your customer’s trust by billing for anything more than the time attributable to working on her project. Similarly, although it can get tough when you are juggling projects for multiple clients, don’t perform work on one customer’s project while you are located on the premises of another. If you are on a customer site, it’s expected that your time is vested only in work for which that customer is paying.
Look, this seems obvious. But I’ve seen how it goes sideways in practice. You’re at Client A’s office, waiting for a meeting to start, and you check your email and see something urgent from Client B. You spend twenty minutes dealing with it. Do you bill Client A for that time? You were on their premises. But you weren’t doing their work.
The answer should be no, obviously. But when you’re tracking hours across three or four engagements, these micro-decisions happen constantly. The only way to stay honest is to be almost pedantic about it.
2. Don’t Promise Anything You Can’t Deliver
Ethical practices in management consulting apply not only to what you actually do, but also to what you say. Never promise a customer you will do something if you have the slightest doubt in your mind about successfully delivering on it. That doesn’t mean you can’t demonstrate optimism, but there’s a big difference between saying you’re optimistic about an outcome and promising that you’ll secure it.
3. Honesty and Candour in Communication
Sugarcoating facts and twisting the truth to make it more palatable are political techniques best left to those within your customer’s organisation. Your customer is paying you good money to expose issues and problems and to propose solutions. You can only help your customer effectively if you are totally honest, even if that means telling people things they don’t wish to hear. Honesty in communication is one of the most important ethical practices in management consulting—perhaps second only to confidentiality.
This one gets tested more than you’d expect. A client’s CEO has a pet initiative that clearly isn’t working. Everyone inside the company knows it, but nobody will say it because… well, because he’s the CEO. You’re brought in partly because you can say what employees can’t.
But then you realise—your contract renewal depends on that same CEO being happy with your work. Suddenly the incentives get complicated.
The consultants who build lasting reputations are the ones who tell the truth anyway. It might cost you a contract in the short term. But word gets around about who can be trusted and who just tells clients what they want to hear.
4. Client Confidentiality
This is a big one and I already mentioned it briefly in the introduction to this post. When working on a customer’s project, you’ll be privy to all kinds of proprietary information which you’re expected to protect. Never discuss the details of projects with anybody outside of the client company, unless you’re given express permission (by the customer) to do so. You will also need to take appropriate measures to protect any paper documents, digital files or data that belongs to the customer.
What an Ethics Consultant Would Tell You About Competing Clients
There’s one ethical area that the four tenets above don’t quite cover, and it’s worth addressing directly: what happens when you work with competitors?
If you specialize in a particular industry—logistics, healthcare, manufacturing—you’ll inevitably be approached by companies that compete with each other. An ethics consultant helping a large firm would develop detailed policies around this. As a solo practitioner, you need to think it through for yourself.
My view: don’t work for direct competitors simultaneously. Even if you’re scrupulous about not sharing information, the appearance of conflict undermines trust. If a prospect approaches you while you’re engaged with their competitor, be honest about it. Most will respect that.
After an engagement ends, there’s usually a reasonable cooling-off period before working with competitors. What’s reasonable? Depends on the situation. Six months is often appropriate. A year for particularly sensitive work.
The harder question is what to do with industry knowledge. If you helped one company optimize their warehouse operations, you learned things. Some of that knowledge is genuinely proprietary—specific data, particular strategies. That stays locked away. But general expertise about warehouse operations? That’s your professional capital. You’re allowed to get better at your job.
The line between these isn’t always clear. When in doubt, err on the side of caution.
Create Your Own Code of Ethics
The four ethical practices in management consulting described above are those which I believe should be given the highest priority and should never be subject to compromise. I strongly recommend that you create your own code, which includes these and any other ethical considerations you intend to honour. Put your code of ethics in writing and display a copy prominently in your office or above your desk.
As a consultant you are in a position of great responsibility, which is something you should never lose sight of. Creating your own ethical code of practice will help to cement that sense of responsibility. Adhering to it determinedly will allow you to respect yourself and become known in your marketplace as a trustworthy and reputable consultant.