collegial and cooperate relations with other OD-HSD professionals. These include:Using colleagues as consultants to provide ourselves with feedback or suggestions about our own development and to minimize the effects of our blind spots.Creating partnerships with colleagues to enhance our effectiveness in serving clients whose needs are greater than we can serve alone.Recognize our personal needs and desires and deal with them in the performance of our professional roles and duties.Practice within the limits of our competence, culture, and experience in providing services and using techniques.Neither seek nor accept assignments outside our limits without clear understanding by clients when exploration at the edge of our competence is reasonable.Refer clients to other professionals when appropriate.Consult with people who are knowledgeable about the unique conditions of clients whose activities involve specific areas in which we are inexperienced or not knowledgeable:In special functional areas (such as marketing, engineering, or R&D)In certain industries or institutions (such as mining, aerospace, health care, education, or government)In multicultural settings (such as when we practice in settings in which there is significant diversity in the race, ethnicity, or gender of the people involved)Practice in cultures different from our own only with consultation from people native to or knowledgeable about those specific cultures.3 Responsibility to Clients and Significant OthersServe the long-term well-being of our client systems and their stakeholders.Be aware of the beliefs and values relevant to serving our clients, including our own, our profession’s, our culture’s, and those of the people with whom we work (personal, organizational, and cultural).Be prepared to make explicit our beliefs, values, and ethics as OD-HSD professionals.Avoid automatic confirmation of predetermined conclusions about the client’s situation or what needs to be done by either the client or ourselves.Explore the possible implications of any OD-HSD intervention for all stakeholders likely to be significantly affected; help all stakeholders while developing and implementing OD-HSD approaches, programs, and the like, if they wish help and we are able to give it.Maintain balance in the timing, pace, and magnitude of planned change so as to support a mutually beneficial relationship between the system and its environment.Conduct any professional activity, program, or relationship in ways that are honest, responsible, and appropriately open.Inform people with whom we work about any activity or procedure in which we ask their participation.Inform them about sponsorship, purpose and goals, our role and strategy, costs, anticipated outcomes, limitations, and risks.Inform them in a way that supports their freedom of choice about their participation in activities initiated by us; also acknowledge that it may be appropriate for us to undertake activities initiated by recognized authorities in which participants do not have full freedom of choice.Alert them to implications and risks when they are from cultures other than our own or when we are at the edge of our competence.Ask help of the client system in making relevant cultural differences explicit.Seek optimum participation by people with whom we work at every step of the process, including managers, labor unions, and workers’ representatives.Encourage and enable people to provide for themselves the services we provide rather than foster continued reliance on us; encourage, foster, and support self-education and self-development by individuals, groups, and all other human systems.Develop, publish, and use assessment techniques that promote the welfare and best interests of clients and participants; guard against the misuse of assessment techniques and results.Provide for our own accountability by evaluating and assessing the effects of our work.Make all reasonable efforts to determine if our activities have accomplished the agreed-upon goals and have not had any undesirable consequences; seek to undo any undesirable consequences, and do not attempt to cover them up; use such experiences as learning opportunities.Actively solicit and respond with an open mind to feedback regarding our work and seek to improve our work accordingly.Cease work with a client when it becomes clear that the client is not benefiting or the contract has been completed; do not accept or continue work under a contract if we cannot do so in ways consistent with the values and ethics outlined in this Statement.Establish mutual agreement on a fair contract covering services and remuneration.Ensure mutual understanding and agreement about the service to be performed; do not shift from that agreement without both a clearly defined professional rationale for making the shift and the informed consent of the clients and participants; withdraw from the agreement if circumstances beyond our control prevent proper fulfillment.Ensure mutual understanding and agreement by putting the contract in writing to the extent feasible, yet recognize that:The spirit of professional responsibility encompasses more than the letter of the contract.Some contracts are necessarily incomplete because complete information is not available at the outset.Putting the contract in writing may be neither necessary nor desirable.Safeguard the best interests of the client, the profession, and the public by making sure that financial arrangements are fair and in keeping with appropriate statutes, regulations, and professional standards.Deal with conflicts constructively and minimize conflicts of interest.Fully inform the client of our opinions about serving similar or competing organizations; be clear with ourselves, our clients, and other concerned stakeholders about our loyalties and responsibilities when conflicts of interest arise; keep parties informed of these conflicts; cease work with the client if the conflicts cannot be adequately resolved.Seek to act impartially when involved in conflicts among parties in the client system; help them resolve their conflicts themselves, without taking sides; if it becomes necessary to change our role from that of impartial consultant, do so explicitly; cease work with the client if necessary.Identify and respond to any major differences in professionally relevant values or ethics between ourselves and our clients; be prepared to cease work, with explanation of our reasons, if necessary.Accept differences in the expectations and interests of different stakeholders and realize that those differences cannot always be reconciled; take a whole-win approach to the resolution of differences whenever possible so that the greatest good of the whole is served, but allow for exceptions based on more fundamental principles.Work cooperatively with other internal and external consultants serving the same client systems and resolve conflicts in terms of the balanced best interests of the client system and all its stakeholders; make appropriate arrangements with other internal and external consultants about how to share responsibilities.Seek consultation and feedback from neutral third parties in cases of conflict involving ourselves, our clients, other consultants, or any of the systems’ various stakeholders.Define and protect confidentiality in our client relationships.Make limits of confidentiality clear to clients and participants.Reveal information accepted in confidence only to appropriate or agreed-upon recipients or authorities.Use information obtained during professional work in writings, lectures, or other public forums only with prior consent or when disguised so that it is impossible from our presentations alone to identify the individuals or systems with whom we have worked.Make adequate provisions for maintaining confidentiality in the storage and disposal of records; make provisions for responsibly preserving records in the event of our retirement or disability.Make public statements of all kinds accurately, including promotion and advertising, and give service as advertised.Base public statements providing professional opinions or information on scientifically acceptable findings and techniques as much as possible, with full recognition of the limits and uncertainties of such evidence.Seek to help people make informed choices when they refer to statements we make as part of promotion or advertising.Deliver services as advertised and do not shift without a clear professional rationale and the informed consent of the participants or clients.
4 Responsibility to the OD-HSD ProfessionContribute to the continuing professional development of other practitioners and of the profession as a whole.Support the development of other professionals by various means, including:Mentoring with less experienced professionals.Consulting with other colleagues.Participating in reviews of others’ practices.Contribute to the body of professional knowledge and skill, including:Sharing ideas, methods, and findings about the effects of our work.Keeping our use of copyright and trade secrets to an appropriate minimum.Promote the sharing of professional knowledge and skill.Grant use of our copyrighted material as freely as possible, subject to a minimum of conditions, including a reasonable price based on professional as well as commercial values.Give credit for the ideas and products of others.Respect the rights of others in the materials they have created.Work with other OD-HSD professionals in ways that exemplify what the OD-HSD profession stands for.Establish mutual understanding and agreement about our relationships, including purposes and goals, roles and responsibilities, fees, and income distribution.Avoid conflicts of interest when possible and resolve conflicts that do arise
