Are Ethics Important for Competitive Intelligence Professionals?

During the last decade, Competitive Intelligence (CI) has graduated from a simple data gathering exercise through industry/competitor analysis and has become a core capability for the strategic decision makers. Competitive intelligence is no more a tactical decision, it has strategic orientation and we find top management actively abetting the efforts of corporate intelligence teams. The information gathered is used as a direct input to the strategic decisions. However, there are apprehensions that competitive intelligence activities are shadowy, unethical and illegal. The paper identifies the ethical issues faced by CI professionals, which are normally concerned with getting strategically critical or sensitive data about the competitors and the methods used to assemble this information. The paper also quotes the examples of unethical competitive intelligence practices of companies, lists a set of tentative situations where ethical dilemma would be faced by decision makers, and suggests the ethical and unethical responses to these situations. It also suggests following a Code of Ethics by Competitive Intelligence Professionals as well as a few rules of thumb to face the ethical dilemmas