It is obvious why you should behave legally in business but why is it important to be ethical? And for that matter, what is ethical behaviour in business?
I am now officially a Business Mentor with Business Mentors New Zealand. I even have my first assignment already! This is in addition to my Business Coaching work and it has raised an interesting issue. How to deal with conflicts of interest? I have to be very clear about when I am working as a Business Mentor for BMNZ and when I am working for CLAD Services as a Business Coach/Consultant. I cannot offer my business services to my mentoring clients. I can however refer my business clients to Business Mentors NZ. Fortunately BMNZ have good processes in place for dealing with this which makes it easier for me. This is not the first time I have faced this. I have entered into many contracts over the years where I have had to separate my other work from the contract and have processes in place to deal with conflicts of interest.
This is always a tricky one and there are a number of things you need to consider. Often small businesses choose to "ride it out" for quite some time before hiring a new person and then when they do, they wonder how they coped before. Some questions to think about are:
It isn't necessary for you to do your bookwork yourself but you need to weigh up the benefits of paying someone else to do it.