Project Management Professional (PMP)
PMI Code of Ethics: the four values for the PMP exam
The PMI Code of Ethics and Professional Conduct rests on four values: responsibility, respect, fairness and honesty. Each value has aspirational standards that practitioners strive for and mandatory standards whose breach can lead to disciplinary procedures before PMI's Ethics Review Committee.
Who it applies to and how it is built
The Code applies to PMI members, PMI certification holders, people starting a PMI certification process, and PMI volunteers. Each of its four chapters has aspirational standards and mandatory standards. One act can breach both.
For respect, fairness and honesty the Code says that condoning the wrong conduct is itself a violation. A project manager who watches a team lead belittle a junior analyst week after week and says nothing is condoning disrespect.
The four values in practice
Responsibility: take ownership of decisions and their consequences. Fix errors and omissions promptly, your own or others', and tell the appropriate authority. Protect confidential information. Report unethical or illegal conduct, file ethics complaints only when facts support them, and never retaliate against someone who raised a concern in good faith.
Respect: listen, learn the customs of others, negotiate in good faith, do not act abusively, and do not use your position or expertise to influence others for personal benefit at their expense.
Fairness: act impartially. Disclose conflicts of interest, give equal access to information to those authorized to have it, and do not hire, fire, reward or award contracts on favoritism or nepotism. If a sponsor asks you to hire a nephew who meets the requirements alongside two other qualified applicants, assess all three on job criteria.
Honesty: be truthful in communications and conduct. The mandatory standard bans deception, including half-truths and withholding information that would make a statement misleading. Listing every passed test while leaving out that a critical suite has not run is a half-truth.
Reporting someone else
The Code asks you to bring violations to the appropriate authority, but to file ethics complaints only when facts substantiate them, and its comment says not to accuse others without all the facts. If a colleague tells you another certified project manager is falsifying figures you have not seen, establish the facts first, then report.
Where the exam catches people
- Believing silence is neutral: under respect, fairness and honesty the Code treats condoning the conduct as a violation.
- Believing a true statement cannot breach honesty: half-truths and withheld information that mislead are named in the mandatory standard.
- Believing you should file a complaint as soon as you hear of misconduct: complaints must be substantiated by facts.
- Believing a relative must be excluded from consideration: the Code requires equal consideration of all qualified candidates, which rules out both favoring and excluding them for personal reasons.
- Believing a concern found to be groundless allows a lower appraisal: retaliation against good-faith concerns is prohibited whatever the outcome.