The way she put it to me – or rather, the way it sounded – she wants to gather market demographic information from her client’s customers, from the client’s own market research data, and apply it to whatever business she intends to do in the future. She states this would be information unrelated to the business she would be consulting for.
I’m thinking this is the kind of data that companies receive no initial net gain from, so they make it profitable by turning around and selling the information/access to other companies that could benefit from it.
I see it as information the company had to work to gather, and in doing so, the company has rights to it whether it is related to their main business focus or not. I figure that any given company would want to charge for access to that information, if they stood to profit from the transaction, right?
About transparency…when I told her that I thought that she might be charged for that information whether the company needed it or not, or if she decided to just take it that she could land in a heap of trouble, the conversation quickly fell apart from there. There was never any mention of transparency.
I told her it sounded like just plain stealing to me, and she didn’t take that very well.
I would agree that if this is data that the company is monetizing in some way, she shouldn’t be expecting to get it for free, and certainly if it’s something that she’s downloading and taking with her it crosses an ethical line. But I think the situation is still a little too vague for me; is the research she’s conducting something she’s doing on her own time, for her own purposes, but what makes that research possible is access to data that she wouldn’t otherwise have? Or is this research that she is doing on behalf of the employer, and which she is learning from? The former seems like an unethical breach of trust that the employer has that she will access business records only for the employer’s purposes - in other words, back to the “scope of consultation” definition. The latter on the other hand could very well be a situation where her knowledge is a natural consequence of what she’s being paid for, and therefore within the expected outcomes of the consulting arrangement.
Let’s run another example, perhaps more in line with what she’s talking about; she’s hired by Company X to do an analysis of their sales and give guidance on future sales, specifically with regard to price. She’s able to access client records for this purpose, and in that process she also makes note of the gender and race of each client. She finds that 88% of buyers are female and 44% are black. Right there, I’d say that was outside the scope of her consulting arrangement if she was specifically limited to looking at pricing information. However, if her arrangement was broader and she was asked to analyze all data related to the clients in relation to pricing, and this little gem popped up I’d say that it was ethical for her to look at that data, provided she shared it with her employer. After that, it’s knowledge and cannot be unlearned, so if she then decides to create a company that caters to the largely black female consumer for similar products, I’d say she’s fine.
I’d consider this a “Vegas Card Counting Rule*” though; if this is something she learns in the course of her work, and it’s in her head, it’s an expected result of the consulting arrangement. She can use the general knowledge (though not share specifics) in her own business or in future consulting arrangements. If on the other hand she develops documentation of research that she did while accessing company records, then those documents are part of the work product expected from the consulting arrangement, and cannot be taken with her or shared with others. And they must be shared with the employer.
*In Vegas it is legal to count cards provided you use only your brain, not some device for recording the count.
[quote=“waetherman, post:22, topic:52438, full:true”]*In Vegas it is legal to count cards provided you use only your brain, not some device for recording the count.
[/quote]
Legal, yes. Allowed, no. Vegas casinos have massive video surveillance networks, d a shared black ball list, and automated facial recognition software. - and they can and will black ball you for legal card counting - unless they think you suck so bad at it that they’ll make even more money off of you.
She is currently not working as a consultant or for any significant organization that would give her access to market research. I believe this is mainly speculation about how to gain access to information she does not already have.
She wants to be an independent business owner, no particular concept at the moment. I think the concept is unimportant to her, except only that she wants to find out exactly what people want most and market to them with the information she’s gathered. I do know that it would be something that revolves around her own interests.
So yes, I believe she wants to gather more information than falls within the “scope of consultation” definition. But that could be overcome by simply being transparent about her intentions - to gather general consumer data for her own market research, yes? For the life of me, I still can’t figure out why she would have an issue with transparency.
