Ethical Considerations

• Firms must follow relevant laws and regulations as well as carefully articulated ethical guidelines when gathering competitor intelligence.
• Industry associations often develop lists of ethical practices that firms can adopt.
• Practices considered both legal and ethical include:

  1. Obtaining publicly available information (court records, annual reports)
  2. Attending trade fairs and shows (to obtain competitors’ brochures, view their exhibits, and listen to discussions about their products)
• certain practices like blackmail, trespassing, eavesdropping, and stealing drawings, samples, or documents are widely viewed as unethical and often are illegal as well
• Some competitive intelligence practices may be legal, but a firm must decide whether they are also ethical, given the image it desires as a corporate citizen.
• Professional associations are available to firms as sources of information regarding competitive intelligence practices.
• This association have a mission to help firms make a “better decisions through competitive intelligence,” and offers codes of professional practice and ethics to firms for their possible use when deciding how to gather competitive intelligence


  Strategy and Competitive Intelligence Professionals Association
• Open discussions of intelligence-gathering techniques can help a firm ensure that employees, customers, suppliers, and even potential competitors understand its convictions to follow ethical practices when gathering intelligence about its competitors.
• An appropriate guideline for competitor intelligence practices is to respect the principles of common morality and the right of competitors not to reveal certain information about their products, operations, and intentions.