Chapter Six. Professional Conduct and Ethics

As project management enters the 21^st century, the governing body, PMI, is working to make project management more professional. By publishing the PMBOK, PMI has given us a working body of knowledge that can be transferred from generation to generation of project managers. We also have a common vocabulary because of the PMBOK and the PMP exam. All of these actions help make project management a professional career.

The next step in the evolution of a profession is to establish rules of conduct and ethics. Professions such as medicine and architecture have had codes of conduct and ethics for years. PMI believes, and rightly so, that in order to make project management more of a profession, a standardized code should be published, and the various parts of the code of ethics and professional conduct should be tested on the PMP examination.