This document is designed to serve as a template that technology consultants and consulting firms can use to create a standardized ethical, professional, and behavioral code of conduct for its employees, contractors, and subcontractors.

From the code of conduct:

Summary
Information technology consultants frequently must observe and practice high ethical standards. Whether seeking new business, pitching fresh projects, inheriting another firm’s initiatives, or administering and supporting current clients’ systems, technology consultants must maintain the highest levels of professionalism. Consultants must protect clients’ networks, data, trade secrets, proprietary information, and other sensitive material from unauthorized access. Individual consultants must exercise the same care to safeguard the consulting organization’s business practices and operations. For these reasons, technology consultants must always abide by specific rules and implicitly understand behavioral expectations. This document outlines the code of conduct that technology consultants must follow.

Audience
This code of conduct is designed for IT managers to provide to consultants and for independent technology consultants to leverage for everyone, from managing partners to support technicians.

Code of conduct details
The undersigned consultant acknowledges:

• We respect information technology’s capacity to transform organizations.
• We apply information technology systems, networks, applications, and capabilities only for the benefit of client(s).
• We listen carefully to clients’ concerns, study thoroughly the implications of our recommendations, and respond professionally to all client questions.
• We support the highest levels of confidentiality of all client information and require a legal mandate enforced by a recognized court of law to release any client information to another party without the client’s prior written authorization.