Feaco expects its members to maintain the highest possible professional and ethical standards. The FEACO Guidelines for professional Conduct and Best Practice constitute a set of minimum rules which need to be an intergrated part of the Codes of Conduct FEACO Member Associations impose on their members.
FEACO Guidelines for Professional Conduct and Best Practice
Preamble
Notwithstanding the fact that FEACO national associations and their members shall comply with the letter and the spirit of the law, they are also all required to subscribe to the letter and the spirit of these Guidelines for Professional Conduct and Best Practice.
Guidelines for professional conduct designed to cover all eventualities must necessarily be written in general terms, expressing broad ethical principles.
It is expected that FEACO members will have at least these Guidelines in force.
These Guidelines are designed to uphold the quality of service, fidelity to the client, transparency, objectivity, social and environmental responsibility, fairness of competition and high reputation of management consultancy.
Qualification
To be considered a management consultancy company/unit, management consultancy must be a substantial part of its business and it must be qualified to analyse problems, to give advice and to assist in implementing such advice. Its activities must not be permanently exclusive to any one client. Management consultancies who are members of FEACO member associations, must be financially viable and self-supporting.
Ethics
The consultancy shall at all times maintain the highest ethical standards in the professional work undertaken and, in matters relating to a client’s affairs, act solely in the interests of the client.
The consultancy shall not do anything likely to lower the status of management consultancy.
The consultancy undertakes that it shall not at any time or for any purpose misrepresent itself by the use of any title, symbol or form of words whatever in order either to lend false authority to its representatives or to mislead clients.
Transparency
Where a consultancy is a subsidiary of a parent body or in alliance with any third party, which is not in the public practice of management consultancy, all such relationships shall be declared to the client at the outset of the project, and the consultancy will not enter into any arrangement, which would detract from the objectivity of the advice given to the client.
Confidentiality
The consultancy shall not disclose, or permit to be disclosed, confidential information concerning the client’s business and staff.
Quality
The consultancy shall only accept work for which it is qualified and has the capacity to undertake, provided it may enter into alliances to acquire such competence and organisation.
The consultancy, prior to undertaking a client assignment, shall define in writing the scope, extent and the manner in which it will undertake the project.
The consultancy will not accept an assignment with a scope so limited that the consultancy is aware that the client will receive either ineffective advice or advice so incomplete, that he needs to seek further advice.
Where a consultancy wishes to employ the assistance of another organisation and/or person not linked with the consultancy to assist in undertaking the clients project, it shall: Inform the client and obtain his acceptance by formal agreement; Ensure that the partners’ work is verified and that they operate to those standards set out in these Guidelines; Support partners to the same extent as if they were part of the consultancy.
The consultancy will ensure that its quality control procedures are adhered to at all time during the assignment. The consultancy shall pay particular attention to the maintenance of quality records, the client perspective and joint evaluation at the end of the assignment.
Finances
The consultancy and the client shall agree upon the terms of the contract and in particular the methods of calculation of the fees payable.
Application of these Guidelines
All FEACO members have in place suitable measures which are designed to monitor the adherence to their code of conduct. Issues related to compliance should be dealt with at a national level.
FEACO and its member associations shall give due publicity to these Guidelines, so as to create awareness with the public, members and clients.
These Guidelines replace the FEACO Code of Conduct as approved by the General Assembly on 17 November 1999.
FEACO European Federation of Management Consultancies - Associations Fédération Européenne des associations de conseils en organisation