CAM Professional Ethics and Standards 2 — Questions and Answers
Question 1: A prospective resident offers you a personal gift to secure a specific apartment unit. What is the ethical course of action?
- Accept the gift as a token of goodwill
- Decline the gift and explain your community's policy on impartiality (Correct answer)
- Accept the gift but report it to management later
- Redirect the applicant to a different unit to avoid conflict
Correct answer: Decline the gift and explain your community's policy on impartiality
Accepting personal gifts from applicants creates a conflict of interest and violates professional ethics; declining and explaining policy maintains impartiality.
Question 2: Which professional standard requires apartment managers to keep resident financial and personal data confidential?
- Fiduciary duty
- Confidentiality obligation (Correct answer)
- Duty of care
- Non-disclosure requirement
Correct answer: Confidentiality obligation
The confidentiality obligation requires property managers to protect residents' personal and financial information from unauthorized disclosure.
Question 3: A maintenance technician reports to you that a colleague is falsifying work order completion records. As a CAM, you should:
- Ignore the report unless you witness it personally
- Confront the technician accused of falsifying records without investigation
- Document the report and bring it to the attention of ownership or HR (Correct answer)
- Advise the reporting technician to handle it themselves
Correct answer: Document the report and bring it to the attention of ownership or HR
Ethical management requires documenting misconduct reports and escalating them through proper channels rather than ignoring or handling them informally.
Question 4: The IREM Code of Professional Ethics primarily obligates members to act with integrity toward:
- Residents only
- Owners only
- The public, clients, and the profession (Correct answer)
- Government regulators only
Correct answer: The public, clients, and the profession
The IREM Code of Professional Ethics requires members to uphold integrity in dealings with the public, clients, and the real estate management profession.
Question 5: A resident requests that you alter lease documentation to reflect a lower income on their file for personal reasons. The ethical response is to:
- Comply if the resident signs a waiver
- Refuse and explain that falsifying documents is illegal and unethical (Correct answer)
- Alter the record only if management approves
- Ignore the request and take no action
Correct answer: Refuse and explain that falsifying documents is illegal and unethical
Falsifying lease documentation is both illegal and unethical; a professional manager must refuse and clearly communicate the reason.
Question 6: When a CAM discovers a potential conflict of interest with a vendor, the best ethical practice is to:
- Continue the relationship as long as services are satisfactory
- Disclose the conflict to ownership and recuse themselves from vendor decisions (Correct answer)
- Terminate the vendor contract immediately without explanation
- Keep the conflict private to avoid disrupting operations
Correct answer: Disclose the conflict to ownership and recuse themselves from vendor decisions
Disclosing conflicts of interest to ownership and recusing oneself from related decisions is the ethical standard for maintaining trust and transparency.
Question 7: Professional ethics in apartment management require that advertising for available units must:
- Highlight only the most desirable features regardless of accuracy
- Be truthful, non-discriminatory, and compliant with fair housing laws (Correct answer)
- Focus solely on attracting the highest-income applicants
- Omit information about pet policies to attract more applicants
Correct answer: Be truthful, non-discriminatory, and compliant with fair housing laws
Ethical advertising must be truthful, avoid discriminatory language, and comply with Fair Housing Act requirements.
CAM Professional Ethics and Standards 2
A prospective resident offers you a personal gift to secure a specific apartment unit.
What is the ethical course of action?