ICP Professional Ethics & Standards 2 — Questions and Answers
Question 1: A team member discovers a colleague has been padding estimates to avoid extra work. What is the ethical response aligned with Agile values?
- Ignore it to preserve team harmony
- Address it privately with the colleague first, then escalate if needed (Correct answer)
- Immediately report it to management without discussion
- Adjust your own estimates to match the colleague's pace
Correct answer: Address it privately with the colleague first, then escalate if needed
Agile ethics favor direct, transparent communication—address issues at the source before escalating.
Question 2: Which principle from the Agile Manifesto most directly supports ethical transparency with stakeholders?
- Responding to change over following a plan
- Working software over comprehensive documentation
- Business people and developers must work together daily (Correct answer)
- Individuals and interactions over processes and tools
Correct answer: Business people and developers must work together daily
Daily collaboration between business and technical roles ensures ongoing transparency and shared accountability.
Question 3: An Agile coach is asked to certify a team's readiness that the coach knows is premature. What should the coach do?
- Certify the team to maintain the client relationship
- Provide an honest assessment and suggest a readiness plan (Correct answer)
- Delay the decision indefinitely without explanation
- Ask another coach to handle the certification
Correct answer: Provide an honest assessment and suggest a readiness plan
Professional integrity requires honest assessments even when they are unwelcome; coaching includes helping teams improve, not falsely validating them.
Question 4: What does 'sustainable pace' in Agile ethics primarily protect against?
- Under-delivering on sprint commitments
- Burnout and long-term team degradation (Correct answer)
- Scope creep from stakeholders
- Technical debt accumulation
Correct answer: Burnout and long-term team degradation
Sustainable pace is an ethical commitment to team wellbeing, ensuring people can maintain quality work indefinitely.
Question 5: A product owner pressures the team to skip the Definition of Done for a critical release. The ethical action is to:
- Skip DoD items to meet the deadline
- Negotiate which DoD items are truly critical and document accepted risks (Correct answer)
- Refuse all work until DoD is fully honored
- Let the Scrum Master decide without team input
Correct answer: Negotiate which DoD items are truly critical and document accepted risks
Ethical Agile practice balances business urgency with transparent risk acknowledgment rather than silently lowering quality.
Question 6: Which behavior best reflects the Agile value of 'individuals and interactions' from an ethical standpoint?
- Enforcing strict process compliance above all else
- Listening actively and respecting each team member's perspective (Correct answer)
- Prioritizing tool selection before team formation
- Delegating all interpersonal issues to HR
Correct answer: Listening actively and respecting each team member's perspective
Valuing individuals means actively listening and respecting diverse perspectives as a daily ethical practice.
Question 7: When a team member raises a concern about unethical data handling during a retrospective, the team should:
- Table the discussion for a future meeting outside the retrospective
- Treat it as a valid impediment and agree on an action to resolve it (Correct answer)
- Defer to the product owner's judgment on data matters
- Treat it as out of scope for a retrospective
Correct answer: Treat it as a valid impediment and agree on an action to resolve it
Retrospectives are the appropriate forum to surface any impediment, including ethical concerns, and commit to corrective action.
ICP Professional Ethics & Standards 2
A team member discovers a colleague has been padding estimates to avoid extra work.
What is the ethical response aligned with Agile values?