PMP ethics

PeterKhitin

Do you ever read a question for the PMP exam, know the right answer, but disagree with it completely? Happens with me. For example a question like 'what if in your company you are not allowed to take any gifts from anyone in the industry. You meet with your old friend, who is a vendor at a competing company, for lunch and he wants to pay. What do you do?' I know that the right answer is that you insist on paying for yourself. But in reality, if you are just having lunch with an old friend, I don't think it's wrong to let him pay. It's not a bribe, actually who I'm having my lunch with and who's paying is my business. Would I be a bad project manager??? Because I want to be one

Infosec_Sam

I don't think accepting lunch from a friend would make you a bad project manager at all, I mean I'd do the same thing in that scenario. Some of the questions on cert exams can be pretty nitpicky — while one answer is technically correct, the hypothetical situation it imposes is usually pretty rare. If you only find yourself disagreeing with an answer here and there, I wouldn't expect you to have much trouble in an actual PM role.

Now let me introduce a different scenario: "In your company, you are not allowed to take any gifts from anyone in the industry. You meet with your old friend, who is a vendor at a company currently engaged in the sales process with your company. He insists on paying for lunch in exchange for more preference over his competition. What do you do?"

This one is a bit more clear that an ethics violation is in place. Your friend is trying to close the deal by taking you out to lunch, which is clearly out of bounds. This is a scenario in which I'd turn down his offer to pay for my meal.