Can I get some advice about business ethics?

Question

I do free lance work for an internet company and was recently contacted by one of our clients requesting to work with me directly instead of through the company I free lance for. Working with me directly would save them money, and I would make more money from them than I am making now. But I would still free lance for the company I am with.

Is this ethical? I was contacted completely unsolicited by this client and I'm not under contract in any way with my current company. If I take this client away, my company loses thousands of dollars every month in fees. I don't want to burn my bridges, but I don't want to lose this client. What should I do? I'm new at this self-employed thing.

Answer 1

At least you stopped to consider whether or not you should do this or not. I think that was a good choice, and I think this is a very legitimate question. I agree with most of what I've read, but I'd like to add this: if you start taking on one client, where will it stop? What if another one asks you to do some work for them? In principle, you are breaking rank with your company by going down this road, which isn't always a bad thing, and could be a good career move. In essence, that might be the start up of your own one-woman company.

Now, I don't know if that's what you want, and if you don't feel ready to start up your own company, I don't think you should. But if it is something you'd like to do, it's best that you be open and honest about it. Give it some thought, but if you feel like you ought to be loyal to your company, that's what you should go with. One client isn't worth breaking ties with your employer--even though you are freelance--unless it's a career move you feel is best for you at this time.

Answer 2

Business ethics dictates you maintain the current relationship with the company you work for and explain to the client that it is unethical to by-pass the current situation. If you were to take them on as a client, which you can do since your contract does not state otherwise, but your current company finds out, you will lose them as a client.

You can propose to do some small project for the client that it outside the normal scope of what you're doing on the free lance side for the company you work for. Then there would be no conflict.

Think about how you would feel if you were the company that had someone working for you free lance and found that they stole a client from you. How would you feel???

Answer 3

Money makes the world go round. Should we make the world stop going around? What's this qualified generalization that ethics and business has to be fundamentally incompatible? We have ethics so people know what to do when the rules become blurry. It is actually totally fundamentally compatible in that ethics is totally integrated into pretty much every business and profession. For example, doctors have a code of ethics. If they abide by their ethics, they gain a good reputation as an upstanding doctor in the medical community, and in turn gain good will and will get more referrals and more business, and therefore get more profit. So there is absolutely no reason why ethics cannot be compatible, or even boost business.

Answer 4

Your gut feel is right. It is unethical, but whether it's legal or not depends on your contract with your co., if you did sign one. If not, you'll have to weigh the pros and cons. How many free-lance jobs have you gotten through this co. and has it been fair to you all this time? If it has been giving you lots of clients to work on, you have to be prepared to lose all of them as soon as it finds out you've bypassed it and gone to work directly with this one client. So your income will be reduced to just this one client. Who knows how much longer this client will use your services? If you do intend to take the risk, you should cover yourself by obtaining some assurance from this client of how much longer they will be using you or perhaps even make you a permanent staff. But in any case, be prepared for your co. to feel sore about your betrayal or under-handedness. Think it over. Ultimately, it's your call.