Ethics & Independence
Trust is the foundation of good advisory work. Integrity is not only a personal value of mine — it is critical to staying credible with the clients I serve. The commitments below describe how I operate, what you can expect from me, and how I manage relationships that could otherwise create conflicts of interest.
Platform and Vendor Independence
I take a platform-agnostic approach to advisory work. I do not have preferred vendors, and I do not promote specific platforms, tools, or providers as a default. When a recommendation is appropriate, I present multiple options so that clients can weigh the tradeoffs themselves.
Client Decision-Making
Advisory work is advisory. I offer perspective, frameworks, and analysis, but every final decision rests with the client. My role is to help you reason through options clearly, not to decide on your behalf.
No Referral Fees or Financial Arrangements
I do not accept payment from, or pay, any firm for referrals or introductions. I have no revenue-share, commission, or finder's fee arrangements with any AI platform, consulting firm, or technology vendor. Any recommendation I make reflects my independent view of a provider's ability to deliver value for the specific client and situation.
Disclosure of Relationships
I will disclose any board seats I hold whenever those relationships are relevant to advice, introductions, or recommendations I provide. More broadly, whenever I hold an advisory role or financial position that bears on something I am recommending or discussing, I will disclose it proactively.
Personal Investments
I invest in AI and technology companies as part of staying current with the industry. My policy is that no single public-market position I hold exceeds $5,000, which keeps any individual holding well below a threshold that could materially influence my advice. For direct private investments, the standard is stricter: if I hold a private investment in any company that comes under discussion in an advisory context, I will always disclose it.
Confidentiality
Information shared with me in the course of advisory work — strategy, internal challenges, organizational details, and specific technology decisions — is kept confidential. I do not share client information with other clients, vendors, or third parties, and I do not use one client's proprietary insights to benefit another.
Privacy and AI Tools
The McMillanAI training platform includes interactive tools powered by large language models. Inputs you provide to the AI Coach and to the in-module exercises are not retained for model training, are not visible to me, and are not visible to any other organization.
That technical posture matters, but it is not the most important thing to know. The most important thing is this: never input private, regulated, or confidential information into any AI tool — including the ones in this program — unless your internal legal, compliance, and risk teams have explicitly approved that use. This applies to personal data, material non-public information, health records, privileged content, and confidential business information.
This principle holds regardless of what a tool's vendor tells you, what a privacy policy says, or how secure the infrastructure appears. The decision about what data may leave your organization belongs to your organization — not to a vendor, not to a course platform, and not to the employee at the keyboard.
The exercises in this program are designed to work without real regulated data. Describe roles instead of names. Describe data categories instead of records. Describe scenarios instead of actuals. The framework works either way. The risk doesn't.
Scope of Advice
My work focuses on enterprise AI strategy, implementation, governance, and organizational readiness. It is not a substitute for legal counsel, regulatory advice, cybersecurity assessment, or financial advice. Where those specialties matter, I will say so and suggest engaging the appropriate experts.
Transparency About AI Use
AI tools are part of how I create and edit content — always, not occasionally. That said, every deliverable I provide should be considered my own work product. I review and refine what I produce, I stand behind what I deliver, and I take full accountability for its accuracy and the judgment behind it.
Professional Standards
I take on engagements only where I believe I can deliver real value. If a client's need falls outside my expertise, I will say so and, where helpful, suggest someone better suited to the work. I stay current on the AI landscape and share material updates with clients when something changes that affects their work.
Quality and Rigor
Good AI advisory work requires the same rigor as any serious consulting engagement. I apply structured evaluation frameworks, test assumptions before repeating them, and distinguish between what has been demonstrated at scale and what is promising but unproven.
Limitations and Risks
AI is a powerful tool with real limitations. Models produce confident-sounding output that is sometimes wrong. They can embed bias from their training data. They create new security surfaces. And there are problems where they are simply not the right tool. When these issues are relevant to a client's situation, I name them directly, help weigh them against the upside, and recommend mitigation — or recommend against the project entirely — when that is the right call.
The Work I Pursue
AI works best when it expands human capability — better service for customers, better tools for employees, and better business outcomes. Cost efficiency is a reasonable goal, but those initiatives should be launched alongside efforts to create new opportunities within the organization and invest in retraining. The engagements I take on, and the questions I ask inside them, tend to reflect that preference.
Engagements I Decline
There are engagements I will decline. Systems designed to deceive users about whether they are interacting with a human or a machine. Employee surveillance that removes transparency. AI deployed to circumvent regulation rather than operate within it. Applications that remove meaningful human oversight from consequential decisions about people's lives — hiring, credit, healthcare, legal status. And projects framed purely as headcount reduction with no accompanying story for how the organization creates more value. I am not the right partner for these types of engagements and politely decline.
Raising a Concern
If you believe I have not lived up to these commitments, I want to know. You can reach me through the contact form on this site.