Ginny Viloudaki, a recent graduate of New York University, is a first-year associate with the McBain Consulting Group. The partner in charge of a major strategy study for an important new client in the shipping business has asked her to call low-level employees in competing shipping companies to gather competitive data for use in devising a winning strategy for the client. The partner instructed her not to identify the client but to introduce herself as a consultant doing an analysis of the shipping industry.
Assume Viloudaki knows that senior managers in the competing firms would consider the data she is collecting proprietary and would not talk with her at all if they knew she worked for a direct competitor. Is it ethical for Viloudaki to question the lower-level employees without revealing that she is working for a direct competitor? What should she do if, after she tells the partner she considers it unethical to make the calls, the partner tells her that consultants do this all the time and that refusal to make the calls would be a career-limiting move?