Professional Practice Guidelines
by Linda Wootton
In striving toward excellence among all APCC members, we recognize the need for a clear understanding of what it means to be a professional communication consultant. As our profession grows and we deal with clients, other consultants, and the global community, problems maintaining standards of excellence become more complex.
Professional practices go beyond adhering to the letter of the law and behaving ethically. A recognition of what is acceptable behavior for a professional communication consultant is the first step toward becoming one. The following four points, adapted from the Standards of Conduct of General Electric Company, are offered as illustrations of what is expected among
professionals. (Adapted from "Statement of Ethics and Standards of Conduct." General Electric Organization and Policy Guide. 1985.)
Neither the APCC Standards of Ethical Conduct nor these statements on Professional Practices should be taken as all inclusive; you will find many situations not covered on these pages. Instead, we offer here common situations as guidelines to help you make your own professional decisions.
- APCC members should recognize the need for continuing education and professional development to ensure competent service.
- Ethical behavior among professional associates, both members and
non-members, should be expected at all times. When information is known that raises doubt as to the ethical behavior of professional colleagues, whether APCC members or not, the member should take action to attempt to rectify such a condition.
- In establishing fees for consulting services, APCC members should consider the financial status of clients and locality.
- APCC members should recognize their boundaries of competence and provide only those services and use only those techniques for which they are qualified by training and experience.
The following questions and answers illustrate common problems within the areas specified in the Code of Ethics. Some, however, cover areas of professionalism that extend beyond ethical
decisions—they are simply questions of becoming truly Professional Communication Consultants.
Choose a topic to see the sections
questions and answers:
Getting Started
Becoming a professional communication consultant can be a minefield full of wrong turns and false starts. In an eagerness to gain experience, many a
would-be professional makes a less-than-ethical choice and a career ends before it ever really began.
Question: I've been asked to do a writing seminar for a local insurance agency. Although I have plenty of teaching experience, having taught writing at a junior college for 11 years, I've never done a seminar before. If I come right out and tell them I have no experience in seminars in private business, they probably won't hire me; if I imply I have plenty of experience, I'm breaking the Code of Ethics. How do I get that first job so I can tell the next prospect that I do have experience?
Answer: Set up an appointment to meet with the prospective client. But before the meeting, put together a portfolio that will honestly represent all the experience you do have, e.g., sample assignments from your classes that might fit the company's needs, reprints of any of your published work, and a resume detailing your training and experience, including such professional memberships as APCC.
In addition, you might try writing a hypothetical seminar plan to show the client what you could do. Package your portfolio as professionally as
possible—even if that means buying a leather binder and getting your stationery printed before you get your first job.
Then meet with the prospective client. Go through the portfolio together. Finally, after you've shown what you can do, admit that this will be your first seminar for private business but that you feel confident you can do a professional job. If you've put together a great portfolio, chances are good that you will be able to get that first job without ever misrepresenting your experience and qualifications.
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Question: My friend works for one of the major employers in town. He recently told me that the CEO complained in a meeting about the poor quality of writing in the reports she was receiving. He thinks the company will jump at the chance for writing instruction now that the CEO has complained. Would it be unethical for me to use this "inside tip" and contact the training director to offer my services?
Answer: There's nothing unethical about such a tip. As a matter of fact, if you don't pursue it, you're passing up a great opportunity.
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Question: I have a friend who says the Training Director in her company is going to start looking for some communication consulting. This friend says the TD never makes a move without the enthusiastic support of the CFO. Would it be unethical for me to make an appointment to see the CFO
before I contact the Training Director?
Answer: This isn't an ethics question; it's a sales question. Read a good sales manual and you'll see that it's always best to go to the Decision Maker first whenever possible. Getting your foot in the door is another sales
question—but be sure you represent yourself accurately when you make the appointment.
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Question: I've been asked to do a customized writing seminar for an engineering department in a large corporation. I teach at a university and this is the last month of the semester. I don't have time to analyze every document the corporation might provide in order to customize the seminar. Engineers always need extensive consulting services to improve their documents. Can I just propose one of my regular seminars and skip all that reading?
Answer: Would this be promoting the highest standards of service? Probably not. For example, this department may have undergone previous writing seminars and only have problems in one area; by offering your standard seminar you could be wasting their time. Instead of bluffing or trying to convince the client a standard seminar is fine, try postponing the seminar until you have adequate time to prepare a program that’s truly customized.
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Fees and Pricing Services
Question: How do I know what to charge?
Answer: This is probably the most-asked question in every type of consulting. To be considered a professional, you must charge enough, yet to be competitive, you must charge at or below the competition; the government frowns on
price-fixing, and fees differ enormously according to the city, the industry, and the consultant's experience.
It is perfectly ethical to have different rates for different
clients-churches have asked more from their affluent parishioners for ages. You may, for example, set lower fees for the local public school or for a seminar you do for the Red Cross than you normally charge corporations for the same service. On the other hand, you don't want to have an entirely liquid fee structure; you want your clients to perceive your fee structure as representative of the ethical professional practices of your consultation. Rate cards and written policies regarding fees demonstrate a consistently professional fee scale.
The APCC Consultants’ Bookshelf lists some books and articles on the subject. A good one is by Herman Holtz, How To Succeed As An Independent Consultant.
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Division of Fees
Question: A member of APCC tells me that General Widgets Corporation is in need of a communication consultant. Furthermore, Good Member has done consulting work with one of the
decision-makers and has briefed me on the type of proposal that would appeal to their corporate needs. I followed the
lead—and the advice—and won the contract. Do I owe Good Member a referral fee?
Answer: Professional practices are often determined not so much by general policy as on a
case-by-case basis. In this case, if you have been told about the company's business needs and the personal preferences of the
decision-makers (for example,"They hate any proposal longer than two pages" or "They only want concrete
proposals—all numbers and facts, no broad generalities"), it would be good business, very professional, and a wise show of appreciation to send a check to Good Member. The amount can be a percentage of the contract or an amount you feel is appropriate. This is not unlike the current situation with
software—some of it is offered to you with the understanding that if you use it and like it, you send the designer a check.
On the other hand, if you were given this same type of information from someone
within the company, it would be a serious violation of professional practices and ethics to send a check or any other kind of compensation to that employee.
There are several keys to determining whether or not a referral fee is warranted. The first might be thought of in the same vein as the first commandment for physicians: first, do no harm. If the company to which you were referred benefited from your contact and was not deprived in any way of fair competition; if the consultant who referred you represented your capabilities fairly and honestly; and if the consultant would not be embarrassed were the company to learn that the consultant benefited from the referral, then, by all means, share the money earned with the one who made it all possible.
Some consultants have a real ability to land clients. If you are not one of these and you know someone who is, a professional agreement could be made by which Consultant Z acts as your agent, much the same way literary agents sell their clients' work. But this must always be done up front; the company doing the hiring should understand that Consultant Z is acting as your agent.
Consultants can also offer to serve as a broker of consultants to a company and, as such, offer the service and the ability to find the best consultant for each
job—and can be paid either by the company or by the consultant hired. This function is not unlike that of an employment
agency—those fees are sometimes paid by the company and sometimes by the person hired for the job.
On the other hand, offering professional communication consultants pure fee payments just to get them to make referrals to/for you is frowned upon and in some instances is illegal.
Likewise, recommending Consultant X not because CX is the best person for the job but because out of all the consultants qualified, CX is the one willing to pay you a share of the fee is unethical and may be illegal.
Offering a decision maker in General Widgets a share in your fee as an inducement to get GW to choose you for a consulting job would, in most places, be not only unethical but illegal. (And you might recognize this practice under the heading of "Accepting Kickbacks.")
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Question: An APCC member has more requests for communication consulting than the member can handle. Good Member calls me and asks if I would like to take on some of the work. Do I owe GM part of my fee?
Answer: Yes. These companies have already come to Good Member; now GM is asking you to do the work. You should draw up a formal agreement with GM before ever making contact with the companies mentioned. In drawing up this contract, there are several things to be considered:
- Is Good Member giving you the contact name only? In such a case, the amount paid to GM could be relatively small.
- Is Good Member allowing you to use Good Member's materials? In this case, the amount paid to GM could be greater than 50 percent, depending on your own contributions.
- Is Good Member giving you administrative support, e.g., secretarial services such as typing, copying,
phone-answering? In this case, the going rate for such services can easily be determined locally.
- Is Good Member giving you training for this consulting job? In this case, there are a variety of ways GM can be fairly compensated for the contribution made to the complete consulting job.
Consider also the relationship between GM and the company. GM could turn over the contract completely to you or could stay in the picture as the principal contractor with the company. If the latter, GM may bill the company, and the
sub-contractor bills GM. GM adds a percentage to the company invoice and pays you, the
sub-contractor, an agreed-upon amount.
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Protecting the Work Product
Question: I see all these great samples in books, other training manuals, even on our APCC listserv discussion site. Am I free to use them?
Answer: Only if you give credit to the creator with the creator's
permission. For example, you may want to use a guide by Dan Dieterich on "Avoiding Sexist Language" that you found in the APCC
Resources for Writing Consultants. Feel free to do so; the manual gives you permission on the copyright page, as long as you credit both the author and the Association of Professional Communication Consultants somewhere on your document. You need to let your audience know that you are using Dan Dieterich’s copyrighted material, from an APCC publication, with their permission.
Use of another consultant's course materials or marketing materials without express permission from that consultant may be illegal and is always unethical.
Similarly, putting together a seminar workbook made up of the material of another consultant, even though you have typed the name of the consultant at the bottom of the page, is not right. If you use another consultant's course materials (notebooks, exercises, examples)
you owe that consultant a payment of royalties for each
use. The copyright law of 1978 grants the creator of any piece of writing all rights and benefits derived from that work from the moment it was created. If you see the name of the writer, it belongs to that writer. It does not have to be registered anywhere in the world for the writer to own that copyright.
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Question: How do I copyright my course materials and my marketing materials?
Answer: The Copyright Law of 1978 made the procedure very simple. The moment you finish writing anything, all you have to do is type your name, the word Copyright or the symbol, and the date and the work is, at that moment, copyrighted. You don't have to register the work at all. Your work is now protected.
However, registering your work with the Copyright Office gives you advantages. For example, if you want to sue consultants for using your course material in their writing seminar, it's a lot faster to sue them if you've already registered the work. But you can always register the work after they've infringed on your copyright, if you've kept all your documents to make it easy for the court to see when, where, how, and why you created the work.
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Question: I have just completed a communication seminar for a local company. The client was very happy with the seminar; so happy, in fact, that she would now like to teach the seminar herself, using my materials. Can she do that?
Answer: Of course she can—provided she tells you of her intentions, obtains your permission, and reaches an agreement with you concerning the fee to be paid to you for the use of your materials. A contract can spell out guidelines for use as well as fee.
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Question: How is the above situation different from "Writing for Hire"?
Answer: It all depends on the agreement you made with the client in the beginning. If the client hired you to write course material, for example, and then conduct the seminar once yourself before turning the seminar over to the client, chances are that the client owns whatever you wrote. (Not unlike being hired to write a users' manual for software. The software maker or the company that hired you to write the manual owns the copyright to the manual.) Be sure you have a clear agreement before doing any writing for hire.
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Using Student/Participant/Client Materials
Question: I've been doing writing seminars for area businesses for quite some time now and in so doing, I've collected a terrific set of examples to use in other seminars as well as in my college classroom. The "how not to do
it"—the examples of pure awfulness in business writing—are truly gems and make very effective teaching materials. I've been using some of these "gems" as examples for years.
Is there anything wrong with that?
Answer: YES! If you've been using them without the specific written permission of the company and/or the writer. Even if you marked out their names, you shouldn't be using their writing without their permission.
In the future, make it a practice to hand out permission slips to everyone in every seminar you
teach—AND to every student in every one of your university classes. It only takes a minute to ensure that everything you use in the future will be done with the writer's permission. Below are examples of standard forms I have developed for my own use in seminars and university classes.
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Student Permission
You have my permission to reprint and use for teaching purposes, in parts or whole, any of the documents I hand in for this course.
Signed:_______________________________________________
Date:________________________________________________
I would prefer that you (do) (do not) use my name on the
reprint/transparency/sample. |
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Seminar Participant Permission
You have my permission to reprint and use for instructional purposes, in parts or whole, any of the documents I hand in for this seminar. Signed:_____________________________
Job Title:__________________________________ Company:_____________________________________
Date: ___________________________________________
I would prefer that you (do) (do not) use my name on the reprint.
My company (does) (does not) require additional permission from my supervisor or from __________________________________ . |
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Accurate Representation
Question: I teach basic composition at the local community college; I've done so for 7 years. The English Department secretary passed on to me a request from a local company for someone to come in and help their people write better reports. I've never taught business writing, but I've taught plenty of people how to write term papers. Surely I am well qualified to teach this course?
Answer: The needs of report writing can be very different from term paper writing. Don't take on a job like this until you become an expert in report writing for business and industry. If you take the job now, you will not only be trying to teach something for which you are not well qualified, you will likely ruin your chances of future jobs.
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Question: I've been teaching business speaking at our university for 15 years. I always get good student evaluations, so I must be doing it well. Can I use basically the same course I've always taught and apply it to a business speaking seminar?
Answer: While you should certainly be able to use the core of your course, you cannot simply teach the same materials in the same way. Basing a business seminar on an old college syllabus would be not be a good professional
practice—you would be regarded as less than professional. Two major factors require consideration in adapting what you have.
First, make sure you have been keeping up with the myriad changes that have taken place so rapidly in business communication within the last two or three years. The growth of electronic means of communication alone has drastically altered the way many businesses communicate; if you can't discuss the special advantages and problems of PowerPoint,for example, you will be doing the client a disservice. Ideally, of course, you are well aware of these changes and are educating your college students with them in mind.
Second, although college students are technically adult, they are accustomed to and tolerant of traditional teaching methods. Adult learners in the workplace have a different attitude toward training, and their needs are different. Brush up on current
adult-learning theory before you redesign your exercises, presentations, and activities. You'll probably find these concepts happily applicable to your college class as well.
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Question: I've been asked to come to a regional conference of corporate secretaries to do a
two-hour seminar on grammar and punctuation. I think their expectations are that once they brush up on these mechanics, they'll be better writers. You and I know that teaching mechanics does not lead to better writing. Should I tell them this? Should I refuse to teach the seminar?
Answer: Go ahead and accept. And go ahead and tell them, right at the start of the seminar. Tell them that, just as a
two-hour course in fixing leaks in their basements won't make them great
house-builders, a course in mechanics won't make them great writers. But tell them also that, just as a wet basement can ruin the salability of a house, sentence fragments and poor grammar can destroy the effectiveness of any document and that they can learn quite a few handy tips on mechanics in two hours.
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Question: I have a client whose native language is French. He originally hired me as a writing consultant to improve the documents he wrote in English. Now he is asking me to write brochures and other marketing materials describing extensive knowledge and experience which I have reason to believe he does not have. I am not contributing any ideas to these
documents—only "fixing up"—as he says—what he has written so that they sound more professional. My name will not appear anywhere on any of these
documents—I get paid by the hour. Is it unethical for me to help him prepare documents that I think are fraudulent?
Answer: This is the kind of client from whom you can gain valuable
experience—in how to end a client/consultant relationship. If you know he's lying, tell him you can't write things that aren't true. If you merely suspect it, as it sounds from your question, don't accuse him of anything; just end the
relationship—fast.
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Question: My client wants to know if the proposal she has written to obtain a government contract is written
effectively—and is written in such a way as to follow all laws and regulations the government requires. I've worked on it and made sure the entire document is clear, concise,
well-organized and very effective. Shall I give her the go-ahead to send in the proposal?
Answer: Tell her you can only tell her about the effectiveness of the document; you are not qualified to judge the legalities of
it—unless you're an attorney as well as a writing consultant—as some of our APCC members are.
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Question: A writing consultant in my city advertises widely and conducts seminars for a variety of companies in this area. I've been told that most of the seminar time is spent on mechanics, that the process of writing is never mentioned, and that what participants learn is that writing a document is simply a matter of producing a
product—that once the 6 types of letter forms are learned—or is it
7?—every participant will find writing business letters a breeze.
In other words, this person probably never heard of APCC and doesn't know what it means to be a truly professional communication consultant. I know I can do a much better job for all of these companies. Should I contact them and tell them they aren't getting their money's worth?
Answer: Go ahead and contact them—but not about this
stone-age writing consultant they have. This isn't a case of
whistle-blowing. It's a case of free-market enterprise. Make an appointment and once you've shown what the latest research and most informed opinions say about writing
instruction—and how you as a consultant use this research to inform your seminars and
consulting—you'll be on your way to gaining new
clients—and the out-of-date consultant will be the
loser—all without your ever having to bad-mouth the competition. Wendy's didn't move in on McDonald's by saying how bad a Big Mac tasted; they just told everybody how great their double cheeseburger was.
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