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Ethical Dilemma in Consulting Essays

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Ethics in Consulting
Ethics dilemmas in consulting

Ethics has become an important topic in business today with good reason. Just look at the headlines: Rajat Gupta Scandal, Anil Kumar and Rajaratnam scandal, Enron, Worldcom, Health South, Great depression, financial crisis due to unethical behaviour by the banks etc. All of these cases are related to consultants either directly or indirectly and they occurred due to the moral fallacy of some of them.
Ethics is an extremely relevant value in business and consulting. The presence of recognized ethics and/or ethical practices tends to diminish the need for informative or legal/contractual precautions in the formalization of relationships, for both of the parts involved in a …show more content…

For instance, both lawyers and accountants have agreed on profession-specific codes of professional conduct, and physicians still frequently take the Hippocratic oath. Regarding management consultants the professional associations have formulated different sets of ethical rules. The contents of the individual codes either specify what professional conduct is or they indicate what cannot be considered as professional conduct. However, it is also obvious that professional rules only serve as overall ethical guidelines. The consequence of this is that the professional when practising is exposed to several more specific ethical issues for which there is no explicit or written solution.
Whether they deserve it or not, it is notable that consultants and their business morals have been questioned and caricatured. Statements such as ``The new witch doctors'' or ``Consultants are people who borrow your watch to tell you the time and then walk off with it'' have often been quoted. A headline like ``They change colour according to the environment'' indicates a certain unreliability. However, it also has to be recognized that consultants often operate in situations characterized by ambiguity, sensitivity and bounded rationality. Therefore it can be expected that recipients in situations where they might be slightly criticized will react with

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