A 13-Point Procurement Ethics Checklist

PurchTips - Edition # 233 June 28, 2011

By Charles Dominick, SPSM

Can This Checklist Improve Your Procurement Ethics?

One component of a successful procurement career is to have acted ethically in all situations. Use this procurement ethics checklist to identify and avoid the ethical traps procurement professionals face daily.

• Do not accept money, goods, services, or favors from suppliers in exchange for information, decisions in their favor, or, really, anything else.
• Comply with your employer's policy on accepting gifts, meals, and entertainment from suppliers.
• If your employer's supplier gift policy allows gifts to be accepted from foreign suppliers for cultural reasons, distribute those gifts to others in the organization who are not involved in decisions affecting the associated suppliers.
• When weighted supplier selection criteria are established before soliciting bids, do not change the weightings or criteria after receiving bids unless legitimate, new information has been discovered.
• Do not "use" prospective suppliers solely to pressure incumbent suppliers - only request bids from suppliers who truly have a chance of winning your employer's business.
• Never share a supplier's proposal details with another supplier unless required by law.
• Never buy or hold the stock of your employer's suppliers.
• If a relative, friend, or yourself owns, manages, or sells for a supplier, recuse yourself from decisions involving that supplier and do not access related information unavailable to competing suppliers.
• Either avoid soliciting charitable donations from suppliers or ensure that suppliers know that donating or declining to donate will not impact the opportunity to do business with your employer.
• If you have a second job, do not use the time or resources of your primary employer to perform activities related to that second job.
• If you have a second job, do not use your primary employer's information to support your second job.
• If you have a second job, do not sell to the suppliers of your primary employer.
• Actively try to educate other employees - including those outside of the procurement department - about ethical supplier interaction.

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