Dear ACRA-L readers and ACRA members:
Yesterday, Patrick O'Bannon replied to a complaint that I filed with the
ACRA Board of Directors regarding a violation of the organization's code of
ethics. As Mr. O'Bannon's post (reprinted below) suggests, ACRA's code of
ethics are for show only, i.e., they make the organization look like the
big boys in SOPA, et al. After I read Mr. O'Bannon's (and ACRA's response)
to my charge of a violation of the group's code of ethics by a principal in
an ACRA member firm, I forwarded it to a colleague in the history
department at Carnegie Mellon University who wrote, "Why even have a code
of ethics?"
I replied to Mr. O'Bannon's note with the following. Rather than
automatically hitting the delete key, give it and Mr. O'Bannon's note a
good read. Then look in a mirror.
Patrick O'Bannon wrote:
-----Original Message-----
From: Patrick O'Bannon [SMTP:[log in to unmask]]
Sent: Wednesday, November 19, 1997 9:50 PM
To: [log in to unmask]; [log in to unmask]
Subject: Fw: ACRA Ethics
Mr. Rotenstein:
As president of ACRA I am responding, on behalf of the Board of Directors,
to your allegations of a violation of ACRA's Code of Ethics on the part of
a member firm.
ACRA's Code of Ethics, like that of most professional organizations, is
intended only as a set of guidelines for member firms. It is assumed that
members agree to abide by the Code of Ethics when they join ACRA, but there
is no implication of "legal" compliance. ACRA is neither a sanctioning
body nor a licensing board and assumes no policing authority to enforce
"ethical compliance." ACRA is neither willing nor prepared to embark on
lengthy and expensive investigations to determine the "facts" behind
charges of ethical violations.
The provision within the Code of Ethics regarding injury to the
"professional reputation of a colleague" is intended, among other things,
to encourage members - and ideally non-members as well - to address their
differences in a professional manner and to discourage public airing of
disagreements, such as your initial posting regarding the CHRS study.
Patrick O'Bannon
President, ACRA
and I replied,
Mr. O'Bannon,
Thank you for your reply on behalf of ACRA regarding my complaint against
**** **** and **** **** . I've followed closely the development of ACRA as
an effective corporate body devoted to keeping CRM viable within the
legislative and regulatory web that fuels the industry. The organization
has done a remarkable job fighting off legislators who threaten the
industry's lifeblood: the Section 106 process and its allied legislation
and implementing regulations. At present, ACRA's membership perceives its
greatest threat to the CRM industry as something from the outside.
Developers. Lobbied legislators. Uninformed politicians. Well Mr.
O'Bannon, I regret to inform you that your industry's greatest liability is
its growing number of ethically bankrupt firms who do poor or insufficient
work.
SHPOs are good at catching the procedural errors in Section 106 reports,
but they are ill equipped to counter legitimate third-party criticism
leveled at consultants in their domain that address methodological and
substantive errors in CRM reports. Inaccurate historiography, missed
resources and suspect historic districts are fine, according to the
Pennsylvania BHP, just so long as the report appears to meet the federal
and state guidelines for historic resources surveys. The client (in this
case), PennDOT, is satisfied because their alternative has cleared the
review process.
Well Mr. O'Bannon, let me assure you that it is cases such as this that
ultimately pose the greatest threat to the CRM industry. Why? Because all
it takes is one blatant example of misconduct, incompetence, or just plain
deceptive business practices for a legislator (or group of legislators) to
start asking some very hard questions of the publicly funded CRM industry.
And in Pennsylvania, for example, what do you think they would find? How
secure do you think the CRM industry will be once legislators learn that
errors such as those illustrated in the **** Route 28 survey or the
unnecessary excavation of sites (e.g., 36Bk588) are more commonplace than
CRM professionals will admit? Or what about CRM firms that use
semi-literate ex-convicts as field techs without the supervision necessary
to ensure the proper excavation, artifact recovery and documentation of
units within big-ticket projects and the SHPO (or, for that matter, the
state's professional archaeological organization [PAC]) never asks "what
was going on" when two women were raped and fatally stabbed at one
Pennsylvania CRM firm's lab?
Mr. O'Bannon, my career in CRM is over. It ended when my former boss began
doctoring reports to lessen the significance of sites and I tried to take
what I thought were appropriate steps to inform this firm's client and the
review agency (BHP) that the firm was engaged in highly unethical
activities that potentially threaten the client's compliance with Section
106. I will not go into the details of my association with that firm, but I
can assure you that they violated virtually every professional code of
ethics set to print in the professions embraced by CRM. Firms like my
former employer and situations like the Route 28 survey are CRM's greatest
liability, among others.
Like any profession, there are good CRM consultants and there are bad ones.
If the good CRM professionals sit by idly and do nothing to clean up their
own mess, someone will. Bet on it. It is not matter of "if," it is a matter
of "who" and "when" and "how thoroughly." CRM professionals frequently lose
sight of the fact that their true clients are not the agencies that cut
their checks. The true clients of CRM are the taxpayers in the communities
where both good and bad work is done.
David S. Rotenstein, Ph.D.
David S. Rotenstein, Ph.D.
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WWW: http://www.city-net.com/~davidsr/crm.htm
E-Mail: [log in to unmask]
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