As I have gone through the courses in the OD&C curriculum, each of them had a focus on ethics within the field. One of the biggest points that I have taken away is around the personal conflict that an OD practitioner would have around their own biases and whether those may be present within the work. When an OD practitioner engages with a client and understands their needs, I would imagine that they might naturally begin to solutionize, would be based upon their previous experiences with related work. In order to provide the best service to their client, they should go through the full OD process without incorporating those biases. In the event that they would be unaware of this, it could lead to a compromised process or misrepresentation of work.
I think about this within my own role in Organizational Effectiveness. There are certain practices that I like to propose when working on a project, based on my own comfort level and knowledge of what ‘works’. An unintentional abuse of this, would look like me proposing a solution without fulling knowing if that was the best solution to propose. It would be pushing my own agenda upon the client.
To avoid this, I think that it’s important for the practitioner to gain clarity around the goals of the project and understanding exactly what the client is trying to ‘solve’. Then, engaging the client throughout the process is important in order to keep themselves ‘in check’ to make sure that they are comfortable with the process and the actions that are proposed along the way.