Ethics? Perhaps this isn’t ethics, but self-preservation. It can be both.

I’m targeting the concept of thinking ahead for your client. And yourself.

A client comes to you asking for a meal recipe. You ask the obvious questions. Do you have dietary restrictions? What do you like? What don’t you like? What is your skill-level as a cook?

But … think ahead.

Why should you do this?

The meal may have to sustain someone for a while until the next meal. They may be about to run a marathon. The recipe may have to be scalable for a varying number of people. The ingredients should still be available in the future.

OK, enough of the food.

You could take the opinion that if a client asks for something, they are always right, and should get exactly what they asked for. Nothing less, nothing more. This will get the project moving more quickly. And get it completed (paid for!) and off the books.

Who cares if it is going to suit the clients business plan for more than a month? Who cares if it is going to easily integrate with another piece in the future?

This is wrong on several levels. Some easy to deal with, some not. There are those clients (yes, you’ve had them too) who come to you with a request based on what they think is technically possible. Some are open to being told that there is a better way to get their message across. Some are most definitely not. A few years ago you might have suggested to the latter that they would be better served with another developer. But, trust me, I know times are lean.

So why is this self-preservation?

If this client is one you want to keep, you don’t want to be that developer who wastes the client’s money by throwing everything away every time. Think ahead, ask more questions, and listen. Yes, listen. For clues about future plans that you should accommodate in your current project. If you can show that you heard what they said (regardless of how poorly it might have been said) and care about the client, this going to put you much closer to being indispensable. Closer, not there.

We all have to develop for businesses we don’t know everything about. Take the time to get to know a client’s business. They want to tell you.