I hope that you have enjoyed the article “Procurement Ethics: Use DRD & Stay Clean.”

Don’t miss updates on Procurement & Supply Chain, Subscribe here!

In my line of work, I often hear things like: “Oh, ethical matters are so difficult to deal with because there is a lack of clarity on what’s right and what’s wrong.”

I agree with this statement sometimes and disagree with this statement often. Some ethical breaches are so obvious and so preventable that this statement is the only defense someone could possibly muster and almost get away with.

So let me make things clear once and for all…

1. If you make a procurement decision for your employer and that decision results in you benefitting personally (i.e., getting money or items of value), it’s an unethical procurement decision.

2. If you make a procurement decision for your employer and that decision results in one or more of your family members benefitting personally, it’s an unethical procurement decision.

3. If you make a procurement decision for your employer and that decision results in one or more of your friends benefitting personally, it’s an unethical procurement decision.

4. If you share a supplier’s “confidential” information with a competing supplier, it’s unethical. The litmus test for confidentiality here is whether the first supplier would approve of you sharing that information with a competitor if the first supplier knew about it.

By benefitting personally, I don’t just mean getting a commission for direct salespeople. I mean getting job stability from an employer who just got a big deal or any other type of “indirect” benefit.

So, there you have some of the most important procurement ethics distilled into a few bulletpoints. Pretty simple, right? No grey area here.

If you use the DRD technique from the article (Disclose, Recuse, Document) when someone close to you works for a current or prospective supplier, you’ve gone a long way towards keeping your ethical slate clean.

And good ethical behavior is a badge of honor if you want a long, successful procurement career.