CAM Professional Standards & Ethics 2 — Questions and Answers
Question 1: A Control Account Manager discovers that reported earned value data was manipulated to hide a schedule slip. What is the most appropriate first action?
- Report the discrepancy through the proper internal channels (Correct answer)
- Quietly correct the data in the next reporting period
- Ignore it since the slip may recover naturally
- Confront the responsible employee publicly at the next status meeting
Correct answer: Report the discrepancy through the proper internal channels
Ethical standards require promptly reporting data integrity issues through established organizational channels.
Question 2: Under EVMS guidelines, why is it unethical for a CAM to front-load a budget baseline?
- It misrepresents true performance and distorts variance analysis (Correct answer)
- It reduces the total contract value
- It requires customer approval to implement
- It increases the management reserve unnecessarily
Correct answer: It misrepresents true performance and distorts variance analysis
Front-loading inflates early performance metrics and misleads stakeholders about actual project health.
Question 3: A vendor offers a CAM tickets to a sporting event during an active source selection involving that vendor. The CAM should:
- Decline the gift and disclose the offer per organizational policy (Correct answer)
- Accept only if the value is under $100
- Accept and report it after the contract is awarded
- Ask a colleague to accept the tickets instead
Correct answer: Decline the gift and disclose the offer per organizational policy
Gifts during active procurements create conflicts of interest and must be declined and disclosed.
Question 4: Which practice best demonstrates a CAM's ethical duty of accurate status reporting?
- Reporting variances objectively even when they reflect poorly on the CAM's own control account (Correct answer)
- Reporting only favorable variances to keep leadership confident
- Delaying bad news until a recovery plan is fully developed
- Averaging variances across periods to smooth the trend
Correct answer: Reporting variances objectively even when they reflect poorly on the CAM's own control account
Objective, timely reporting of both favorable and unfavorable variances is a core ethical obligation.
Question 5: A CAM is pressured by a program manager to shift charges from an overrunning control account to one with remaining budget. This practice is known as:
- Mischarging, which is unethical and potentially illegal (Correct answer)
- Rebaselining, which is an accepted practice
- Budget leveling, which requires customer approval
- Cost transfer, which is routine bookkeeping
Correct answer: Mischarging, which is unethical and potentially illegal
Deliberately charging costs to the wrong account is mischarging and can constitute fraud on government contracts.
Question 6: What should a CAM do if asked to certify an Estimate at Completion (EAC) they believe is unrealistically optimistic?
- Document their independent analysis and refuse to certify a figure they cannot support (Correct answer)
- Certify it since the program manager holds final responsibility
- Certify it but add a private note in their personal files
- Certify a midpoint between their estimate and the requested figure
Correct answer: Document their independent analysis and refuse to certify a figure they cannot support
A CAM must only certify estimates they can substantiate with documented analysis.
Question 7: Which of the following is a key element of maintaining data integrity in earned value management?
- Ensuring performance is claimed only per pre-defined earning rules (Correct answer)
- Adjusting percent complete to match spent costs
- Allowing retroactive changes to closed accounting periods
- Setting all work packages to level-of-effort measurement
Correct answer: Ensuring performance is claimed only per pre-defined earning rules
Claiming performance strictly by established earning rules prevents subjective or inflated progress claims.
CAM Professional Standards & Ethics 2
A Control Account Manager discovers that reported earned value data was manipulated to hide a schedule slip.
What is the most appropriate first action?