Chapter Ethics Exercise #5 You have just started a new project with a new client. This is something new for you, working with the owner of a 230-person Serbian farming and food processing company to help grow the company through restructuring management, marketing and sales for entering export markets, and streamlining operations to reduce costs and increase processing speed. You are new to the country and to agriculture but the Belgrade banker who recommended you and the four long Skype meetings with the owner convinced all three of you that you had the required experience and skills. Once you started the project, you needed the services of an export marketing and sales expert and a food processing expert, both local consultants recommended jointly by the government and the Serbian association of technical consultancies. The project seems to be going well, there are no language or cultural issues, and the client accepted the project plan. Two weeks into the project, you feel you are getting conflicting messages from the client. Despite the project plan, based on your initial findings the client now wants to change the scope of activities, to focus more on the management issues that is your specialty. He also has raised some concerns about your team, which he also agreed to in the contract. Specifically, he wants you to fire the local experts and just do the whole project yourself. Finally, he has shared your initial assessment with others in the local food processing association, which is unfortunate because you had wanted to sell your services to them after completing this engagement. You hear this is not the first consulting team he has worked with and rumors that he ended up not paying them after accepting their initial work. You raise these rumors with him and he pays 50% of your fee immediately and says he wants to proceed with the original scope but without your consultants. Please answer this question based of the above ethic case. 1. Are there any ethics issues here or is this just the way new consulting engagements sometimes go? 2. Put yourself in the client's position. Are you delivering what you mutually agreed to? 3. What's your obligation to your employees on this project with whom you have a project contract? 4. What sections of the IMC USA Code of Ethics are relevant? 5. Has the client compromised your future opportunities by sharing your work? 6. What do you recommend be done to resolve this issue? To have prevented it?