Public Safety Assessment Centers: A Steward's Perspective

Abstract

Public safety assessment centers are primarily conducted for promotional examinations. The duties owed to the stakeholders served by public safety assessment centers have been generally outlined in the newly revised Guidelines and Ethical Considerations for Assessment Center Operations. This paper provides a useful matrix that identifies seven ethical duties owed to each of seven stakeholders and a major purpose of this paper is to explicitly articulate and explain the extent of these duties and their importance as part of the Assessment Center Administrator's duty related role. The authors present this matrix as a framework for helping assessment center administrators and other key public sector professionals as they consider the broad array of obligations owed in properly conducting an assessment center selection or promotional process. False short-term economies may result by shortcutting these explicit and implied ethical duties. The matrix provides a simple but helpful perspective for evaluating the degree to which public safety assessment centers meet duties owed, and allows human resource professionals and other decision makers to identify the associated costs and benefits.