Networking with your company's consultant

July 28, 2020 11:35 AM

I met someone whose work I really admire and would like to reach out

Our company hired a consultant to do a complete analysis of one of our digital properties and create a request for proposals to revamp it. During her consultations with each team I got to speak with her for about an hour about my team's part of the project.

After becoming aware of other projects she has worked on, I realized I'm a big fan of her work and that I'd love to do the same type of consulting one day in my career. I would say she is about 10-15 years older than I am.

I would really like to reach out to her for a coffee to pick her brain about her career. My question is, do I need to wait until her contract with us is done? Could it be seen as a conflict of interest, given that we may or may not hire her company to perform the work that she will recommend after providing us with the RFP? Should I ask for permission now or ask for forgiveness later?

Thanks.

posted by winterportage to Education (2 answers total)

I would not call a single chat outside work a conflict of interest. Most organizations have notions of "customary gifts" as items that don't trigger conflict of interest questions. Even if she paid for the coffee, a conversation like that is hard to call a conflict of interest.

A conflict of interest would be something more akin to a relationship with her or if she had paid you to provide her thoughts. As a general comment, for a customer company, a conflict of interest only becomes prominent when you are part of the group at the customer that selects vendors for contracts going forward. If you are not on that group, even a legitimate conflict of interest would not become a problem. Conflict of interests are not an inherently bad thing - they just need to be identified and disclosed when appropriate.
posted by saeculorum at 12:11 PM on July 28, 2020

I am sometimes this consultant, and I'd have no qualms having lunch or whatever about how my job works. My company does generally have a no-poach agreement in our client master service agreements, so if you specifically asked how to come work at my company I'd just say to connect with me on LinkedIn and ping me when the work is done.

But as long as you're just asking about insight into how my job is done so that maybe you know more about how to prepare for someone like me to come in and do stuff, whatever you want to do with that information isn't my responsibility.
posted by Lyn Never at 12:15 PM on July 28, 2020 [3 favorites]