You are a management consultant who is asked by a large employer to design and implement a system to select workers for a manufacturing plant. The plant is unionized, and there is a history of poor union-management relations. Management informs you that it intends to break the union and, as part of this effort, you are to come up with a selection system that will screen out all new job applicants having pro-union attitudes. The idea is to skew the workforce toward management so that the union can be broken in a future decertification vote. What's more, you are to keep the purpose of the selection system a secret and are asked by management to sign a contract in which you promise not to reveal its intentions to the union, the labour board, or any other outsiders.

 

Dilemma: Where should a persons loyalty lie? Whose interests should you serve? Is it wrong for you, as the management consultant, to accept a fee to do what management is asking? Is it against your professional code of ethics?