{"id":533,"date":"2020-02-28T16:35:39","date_gmt":"2020-02-28T16:35:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jackofalltradesmasterofsome.com\/blog\/?p=533"},"modified":"2020-02-28T16:35:42","modified_gmt":"2020-02-28T16:35:42","slug":"consulting-101-ethics-and-lying","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/jackofalltradesmasterofsome.com\/blog\/2020\/02\/28\/consulting-101-ethics-and-lying\/","title":{"rendered":"Consulting 101 – Ethics and Lying"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Ethics and Lying<\/a><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

When you play the role of the consultant, you are usually\nexpected to be the expert in everything. In reality, you will be placed in\nsituations where things are very new to you. This is where the fine line\nbetween being a professional and outright lying can be difficult to navigate.\nMany times, your sales team will sell you and your role to a client without any\noutside input and you will be the one left on the hook to deliver the\nexpectations they set. It would be easy to just tell everyone a few white lies\nto cover for yourself until you can sort things out, but that can and will land\nyou in hot water pretty quickly. Remember, you are usually with the client who\nprobably has some fundamental knowledge of his or her own day job and will be\nquickly able to figure out if you are making statements that you won\u2019t be able\nto back up.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Since the situation of not always being the expert you were\nsold as is usually unavoidable from time to time, it is best to talk about what\nto do in this situation rather than really spend a lot of time talking about\nhow to avoid it. In these situations, it is a good strategy to hide behind a\nwall of questions rather than a wall of lies. Asking the right questions is rarely\nseen as a lack of understanding and, in fact, can show your ability to connect\ndots, build rapport and give you the opportunity to get your footing and become\nthe expert you are expected to be. Prior to walking into the client\u2019s home turf,\nremember to do as much research as you can. Between searching the internet, the\nsales teams\u2019 notes and your firms\u2019 management, there is a wealth of information\nyou should be able to gather. Research what the client does on their company\nwebsite. Are you going to be working with their accounting department? The\nsales and marketing group? Read through some self-paced courses on the topic as\nthere are plenty of free sources online. Ask your manager if there is any in-house\ntraining you could take prior to starting with the client. It is also vital for\nyour manager to sit down with you before going onsite and discuss the details\nand responsibilities of the work that was signed off. If you are being sent to\nthe wolves to fend for yourself with no support, it would be wise to raise that\nconcern early as it is not a situation that will send you or your firm on a\npath to success. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Another big ethics violation you may encounter revolves\naround accurately recording and reporting hours worked. A great motto to live\nby is: \u201cbill what you work\u201d. If your manager or director is trying to artificially\ninflate your billable hours, that will be an automatic red flag. This is a cash\ngrab and any ethical-based firm will not allow this. This action is also a\nbreach of contract and could land your firm in legal hot water. Some firms\nusually try to mask this by suggesting you actually work 45 to 50 hours a week.\nIf there is work to be done and you are trying to stay ahead of schedule or\nbuild a name for yourself, it is usually ok. However, if you are finding\nyourself watching videos online or scrounging for ways to kill time without\nproducing anything valuable, it would be wise to raise this concern as it counts\nas taking advantage of the client. In certain situations, you may see the\nopposite of hour inflation where you actually work a valid number of extra\nhours but your manager is not billing that time in an effort to keep the project\nunder budget. This situation helps no one in the long run and you lose a lot of\ncredit and merit for the difficult work you may be doing. In these situations,\nyour manager should be allowing you to record the true hours you worked so that\nthere is a digital record of the true hourly cost. The manager can then mark the\nhours worked as non-billable time to the client so there is no financial cost\nincurred. This would be at your leadership\u2019s discretion but allows you to be\ncredited for the hours you put in while showing the client the actual work\nbeing done.  This, in turn, keeps the\nbillable run rate down if the work is not actually being billed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Something Does\nNot Feel Right<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In one of my earlier projects working for a smaller firm, I was sold to  a client as someone more experienced than I really was at the time. That should have been my first warning sign, but not wanting to make a fuss and being young at the time, I went forward with the role. After a few weeks of staring at an empty screen and rereading the same documents to appear busy, I only billed the hours I was actually working. I was told after a few weeks by my employer that I should bill fifty hours no matter what. That was strike two. As the weeks went on, the project failed to deliver anything useful and my current manager was stalling on purpose. The client began to get angry and took their frustrations out on the consultants on the ground and threatened to take my employer to court for the fees they were charged and the lack of deliverables to show for it. I wish I could tell you how this story ends, but at this point, I knew something was not right and this was not how ethical firms would behave or ask their employees to behave, so I quit and moved on to a better opportunity at a firm I felt was led by better people.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Are you interested in starting a career in consulting? Be\nsure do read the full book Jack of all Trades\nMaster of Some; An Introduction to Consulting<\/a> available on Amazon.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Ethics and Lying When you play the role of the consultant, you are usually expected to be the expert in everything. In reality, you will be placed in situations where things are very new to you. This is where the fine line between being a professional and outright lying can be difficult to navigate. Many […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":603,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-533","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-book","category-consulting"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/jackofalltradesmasterofsome.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/533","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/jackofalltradesmasterofsome.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/jackofalltradesmasterofsome.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/jackofalltradesmasterofsome.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/jackofalltradesmasterofsome.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=533"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/jackofalltradesmasterofsome.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/533\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":608,"href":"http:\/\/jackofalltradesmasterofsome.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/533\/revisions\/608"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/jackofalltradesmasterofsome.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/603"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/jackofalltradesmasterofsome.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=533"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/jackofalltradesmasterofsome.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=533"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/jackofalltradesmasterofsome.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=533"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}