HR Consultants can face personal and societal ethical dilemmas in their work regularly. In looking to bring you on board with their organization, your interviewer wants to hear that you can handle the ethical situation with ease and grace by doing what is right for all parties involved. Because the HR profession deals with managing relations between both people and the organization, ethical situations can arise when determining the rights of all involved, and you will often be relied upon to make the judgement call. In the example, you talk about with your interviewer, make sure that you clearly describe the ethical issue at hand and how you used your critical thinking skills to make the best decision possible.

"I see my role in general ethics as an HR Consultant to be knowing and abiding by the law, keeping things confidential that need to be and eliminating conflicts of interest. Last year, the board of directors at my organization was considering reducing a few important employee benefits, and one such benefit was the 401k match that the company was making. I feared that a dramatic reduction of retirement contributions from the organization would greatly impact our staff retention and ability to hire new staff. Added to that, it felt morally wrong to pull that from staff who had put many years of time and effort into the organization's work. I presented detailed facts and statistics about how our industry competitors handled their entire benefits package, including 401k matches. I researched all of this information on my own and ended up convincing the board that cost-saving measures would need to come in other ways."