diff --git a/changelogs/fragments/308-fix-for-common-non-ascii-characters-in-resources.yaml b/changelogs/fragments/308-fix-for-common-non-ascii-characters-in-resources.yaml
new file mode 100644
index 00000000..d9730f8f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/changelogs/fragments/308-fix-for-common-non-ascii-characters-in-resources.yaml
@@ -0,0 +1,2 @@
+bugfixes:
+  - module_utils.common - change default opening mode to read-bytes to avoid bad interpretation of non ascii characters and strings, often present in 3rd party manifests.
diff --git a/plugins/module_utils/common.py b/plugins/module_utils/common.py
index 1be5513c..c1579549 100644
--- a/plugins/module_utils/common.py
+++ b/plugins/module_utils/common.py
@@ -496,7 +496,7 @@ class K8sAnsibleMixin(object):
         if not os.path.exists(path):
             self.fail(msg="Error accessing {0}. Does the file exist?".format(path))
         try:
-            with open(path, "r") as f:
+            with open(path, "rb") as f:
                 result = list(yaml.safe_load_all(f))
         except (IOError, yaml.YAMLError) as exc:
             self.fail(msg="Error loading resource_definition: {0}".format(exc))