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In October 2025, the People Interest Network hosted a webinar titled ‘The purpose of ethics and values in a project context’. The subject is both wide and deep, and we suggested the following working definitions:

• Ethics: Rules of conduct in a particular culture or group which are derived from an external source or social system. 
• Values: Principles, standards, beliefs or things which are considered worthwhile pursuing by a group or an individual.

They are subtly different: Ethics refers to commonly agreed rules of behaviour and often refer back to some external code – one hears the term ‘code of ethics’. Meanwhile, Values refers to things that are considered worthwhile and desirable in their own right, by ourselves or by a group of people.

Most of the time, in our work and our lives as project people, we rarely give these concepts a thought. However, now and again we have to actively engage with them. Many organisations take the trouble to write down, instil and enforce ethical codes. The APM has one. Other types of enterprise may have an intimate relationship with ethics and values – one thinks of the judiciary, clerical and religious bodies, healthcare for example. A member of the webinar audience noted that the UK Home Office has a board-level ethics advisor.

To help us make sense of this subject, we assembled a panel, consisting of APM’s own Professor Adam Boddison OBE, Laura Ewen, a change practitioner with a background in psychology and Robert Dilts, a writer and co-founder of neurolinguistic programming (NLP). My own first degree is in Philosophy, including Moral Philosophy, as the subject has come to be known and it has been an interest of mine over the years, particularly how it is relevant in our profession.

Adam, who had recently written an article on ethics in the Summer 2025 edition of Project magazine, noted that the world can nowadays seem to be ‘ethically slippery’, as there are increasingly quite polarised views. As ethics and values strongly influence decision making, and projects are all about decisions, it is important to understand these concepts as part of the bedrock of managing a project.

Adam felt it was incumbent on people in positions of leadership to take responsibility for observing ethical codes and reinforce values at times when they were under threat. This often requires a degree of courage, which Adam considers ‘goes with the job’.

We referred to a 2023 APM publication The Blind Spot, which researched how project organisations behaved when ethics and values were tested. Amongst its other findings, The Blind Spot concluded that:

• Where there isn’t an institutional set of guidelines, people use their own codes of ethics.
• These ‘personal ethical codes’ tend to be hidden until violated.
• This means there is a likelihood that any ethical code being applied in a project may be arbitrary, subjective and non-transparent.

The study also asked if a project is publicly funded, whether the ethical codes and values should be disclosed and open to challenge. 

The panel discussed the aspect of ‘moral relativism’ (where there may not be a single guiding code of ethics). An example might be where a consulting organisation is embedded in a client organisation; both may have different ethical codes, with a potential for conflict.

Robert Dilts considered that while it is critical that there are (ethical) guardrails, it is important to consider the ‘Why?’. He referred to the classical NLP ‘Neurological Levels’ model that describes how people and organisations build their world and actions in terms of six interacting levels of importance:

 

This model can be considered as a view of the structure of a culture. Values sit near the top and they influence and are influenced by lower and higher levels. Robert emphasised that where a person or organisation has a good alignment between all the levels, work and life is likely to be a more harmonious and less stressed.

Robert noted that we live in an environment and have capabilities and behaviours that can change and widen as can happen in a project context. That can introduce uncertainties. Having clear values means that you can respond appropriately to changes in the environment or behaviours.

Laura Ewen described how she uses the ‘cultural iceberg’: a model that contains things that we can see above the waterline, such as words and body language, tone of voice, written codes of conduct, but also critically important issues that we can't see, which sit underneath a culture, such as feelings, motivations, morals, or perhaps unreported ethical misconduct, or perceptions. All these aggregate into our assumptions about the operating environment we work in.

Laura emphasised how important it is within our projects and organisations that we can make culture really work, taking what can be quite a nebulous and intangible thing and making it relevant and practical. In all of this, Laura stressed that a healthy culture is good for business, and the panel agreed.

We wanted to ask our audience for their experiences. Around 78% said they were aware of their organisation’s code of ethics (though only two thirds knew where to find it). Where there was a code in place, not surprisingly 85% tried to observe it, although a further 9% would only observe it if they personally agreed with it (bearing out the Blind Spot findings).

One surprising discovery was that over 50% felt they had been asked to do something they considered unethical at work, and around a tenth of this number experienced this regularly.

The overall impression from the webinar was that ethics and values are considered very important in projects, but the way in which they were developed and applied in project organisations was often considered inconsistent and not authentic. 

 

You may also be interested in:

• Join the People Interest Network group today
• Visit our bookshop: Effective Communication in Projects
• Continue the discussion over on APM Community