Ethical Practices at Bohannan Huston
At Bohannan Huston, senior leaders personally promote an organizational environment that fosters, requires, and results in legal and ethical behavior through:
- Absolute adherence to legal and regulatory requirements in developing solutions for private/public sector projects.
- Our corporate ethics statement: “Bohannan Huston expects each employee to observe the highest moral and ethical standards whenever the employee is working on company time and/or representing the company.”
- The orientation process where ethical conduct is discussed.
- The evaluation of conflicts of interest for project involvement that may impact public and private customers.
- Reinforcing the importance of obtaining professional licensure which defines standards for ethical behavior.
- An “open door policy” where employees can discuss unacceptable behavior.
- The Executive Committee’s commitment to rapidly respond to unethical situations when presented.
- Ethics leadership training at summer 2008 conference and 2009 ethics training with project managers.
From our SWOT analyses in 2005, 2007, and 2009, and input from our Quality New Mexico feedback, reports since 2005, we continue to learn the importance of ethical behavior. Our learning has also led to recent modifications in the orientation program where the importance of ethical behavior and expectations of staff are stressed. A result of our efforts was Bohannan Huston being nominated for the 2007 UNM Ethics in Business Award for the way we practice and conduct our business. We are also recent members of the New Mexico Ethics Alliance.
We promote and ensure ethical behavior in all our interactions by stressing our vision and values at a variety of levels within the company and with management and communication structures that provide a number of checks and balances. External promotion regarding ethics occurs with compliance to registration requirements for professional engineers. Internally we promote the idea that if staff has any specific problems they should report them to their supervisor. Our open door policy allows for forums to discuss a variety of issues. It is our practice to work with customers and partners who subscribe to our value system.
We monitor and respond to breaches in ethical behavior through the EC structure where final dispositions of particular situations are made. Relating to our customers, if something deemed to be unethical is observed or learned, the company’s top leadership deals with it directly, primarily at the EC structure.
Our public and private-customers require that conflict of interest issues are discussed on a regular basis. Potential conflicts are surfaced-early in the process of selecting whether a project is-pursued or not. The EC and impacted leadership at various-times will explore strategies for communicating conflicts of-interest with customers in the pursuit of various work assignments. These discussions further the development and awareness of current and future leaders on this subject.
