ABSTRACT
Professionals are expected to keep the confidences of clients, which makes confidentiality a core responsibility of architects. And yet, architects also have an obligation to keep the public’s interests in mind, sharing information if the latter is threatened in any way, which can create dilemmas when what a client wants to keep confidential, the community may not. Confidentiality plays another role when architects are competing for work. Here, practitioners and consultants have a responsibility not to share information that might give one competitor an advantage over another. This has practical as well as ethical reasons behind it: competitors on one project may become collaborators on another and keeping confidences is the best way to engender each other’s trust.
