11.2 Integrity/Honesty

11.2 Integrity/Honesty

Quick Summary: OPM defines Integrity/Honesty as contributes to maintaining the integrity of the organization; displays high standards of ethical conduct and understands the impact of violating these standards on an organization, self, and others; is trustworthy.

Four distinct elements

The definition packs four things into one sentence, and separating them shows why this competency is broader than "is honest".

The organisational element

The definition opens with contributing to the organisation's integrity, not with personal honesty. That ordering is deliberate.

This is not a passive standard. Personal honesty alone — not doing anything wrong yourself — satisfies the second element but not the first. Contributing to organisational integrity means the standard extends beyond your own conduct to the environment you work in.

In practice that includes things like following established procedures and controls rather than working around them, being accurate in what you record and report, and raising concerns through proper channels rather than ignoring problems.

Note the overlap with Accountability (Section 10.2), whose definition includes complies with established control systems and rules and holds self and others accountable. The two competencies are related but distinct: Accountability is about answering for results, Integrity/Honesty is about the ethical standard those results are produced under.

Understanding the impact — on three parties

The third element is unusually specific: understanding the impact of violations on an organization, self, and others. Three parties are named.

What the competency asks for is not merely knowing that violations are prohibited, but understanding why they matter and to whom. Someone who complies because rules are rules satisfies less of this definition than someone who understands what breaches actually cost.

This matters for public service specifically. A federal record that is inaccurate can affect the person it describes. A process shortcut can produce a decision that cannot be relied on. The harm often lands on someone other than the person who caused it.

Trustworthy

The final element is listed separately from ethical conduct, and it is worth treating separately. Trustworthiness is about reliability from another person's point of view: whether people can depend on what you say, on your handling of confidential information, and on your doing what you undertook to do.

A person can be scrupulously ethical and still not be someone colleagues rely on — if they are inconsistent, or careless with information, or do not follow through. The definition names both.

Integrity and the assessment itself

This competency has a direct connection to how you take USA Hire.

The standard announcement language states: overstating your qualifications and/or experience in your application materials or application questionnaire may result in your removal from consideration. Cheating on an assessment may also result in your removal from consideration.

So the integrity standard applies to the assessment process itself, in two ways.

On the application. The minimum-qualification questions are self-reported, and human resources verifies them later (Section 1.2). Overstating there is both an integrity issue and a practical risk, since verification happens after scoring.

On the assessments. Beyond the announcement language, the practical position is that USA Hire uses CAT engines drawing from an assessment item pool, so candidates do not receive identical items, and testing may be proctored or un-proctored. Material claiming to reproduce live items is of little value even setting the integrity question aside.

Answering accurately

The Interaction assessment's advice applies here as elsewhere — read thoroughly, be honest, stay true to yourself.

There is a specific reason honesty matters on this competency in particular. Integrity/Honesty is probed, like every Interaction competency, through multiple items on different scales across an untimed assessment. Answers that reflect how you actually behave stay consistent across those phrasings without any effort. Constructing an idealised profile requires maintaining a fiction across agreement, frequency and comparative items — and doing so on the integrity competency specifically is an odd place to start.

The genuinely useful preparation is to have read the definition and thought about what it covers, so that when an item asks about following procedures, handling information, or raising concerns, you recognise the behaviour being described.