Make sure that any consultancy you use checks its clients

In response to the feature on ethical design (DW 21 September), the world will be a better place

when designers and their consultancies without morals or a vision – other than to increase their profits – are no longer in existence.

I would suggest that for any public company, the design groups mentioned in Clare Dowdy’s article will be a huge liability as shareholders discover that they have retained the services of consultancies that are working either directly or indirectly with unethical companies.

Nowadays, any company that does not have a squeaky-clean environmental and ethical history is a liability to a shareholder’s portfolio.

The moral is this: If you hire a design consultancy, check its client list first on the Web by typing in the client’s name and then the word ‘lawsuit’, and then ask yourself if you want to be associated with it.

Jonathan Crinion, by e-mail