PROFESSIONAL ETHICS
The Concept of a Profession
Professional ethics is the ethics of the professionals who are members of a given profession. The key point is that such professions have their typical service ideal and scientific training.
The professional status is based on a science that has its own traditions, methods of work, research paradigms, scientific theories, and educational institutions.
Engineers form a profession if we think that they have their own service ideal and science. The latter condition is easily satisfied, but the former is more problematic
Professional Power and Internal Ethics
Professional associations serve many functions, but they always look after their power base. Internal ethics and collegial loyalty are especially relevant in crisis situations, such as in malpractice cases.
The Normative Point of View
The normative approach to professional values allows one to criticize professional life and practices. This takes place by comparing what should happen and what in fact happens; the greater the gap is, the more the profession deserves to be blamed.
The normative approach allows us to say how professional life should be conducted.
The Requirement of Good Professional Practice
Trustworthiness and Virtue
Ethical Codes of Conduct
The profession publishes its own code of conduct and requires that its members know it, recognize it, and stay committed to its general spirit as well as its details
The code is also useful because it defines the limits of professional expertise and thus provides a definition of the profession.
Responsibility and Duty
Loyalty
Confidientality
Personal integrity
Informed Consent
Authority
Anti-Paternalism
Autonomy
High Standards of Work
result of their special expertise and the importance of their service ideal
agent whose judgment replaces that of the client when the authority reveals it.
means one’s ability to resist temptations even in difficult situations in which the risk of retribution is negligible
a strong and unconditional commitment to some special people
one whose values, skills, and virtues are such that the person can be trusted in the widest variety of circumstances.
If one does not do one’s duty, one is held to be responsible for a moral wrong and can be blamed.
A professional is a trusted and responsible authority who provides the care the client needs.
If professionals provide a service to their clients, it is clear that it cannot be done without their consent.
Aims at the client’s best interests even when the client does not agree. The basic rule is that paternalism should be avoided in most cases.
The clients have the right to assume that the professional standard of work is as high as posible.
Multiprofessional Networks
is meant the fact that the modern professional works as a member of a team that consists of many professional but also nonprofessional members. This may also be a network whose members are not present at one place but who form a digitally connected network.
A successful practice requires that all the agents are able to cooperate seamlessly and avoid conflicts of interest at all levels
professional values
are moral values, they are always ranked on top
Heterodox Professional Intrapersonal Roles
the professional in question must rank order the relevant values so that the most important is served first and any necessary compromises are allowed to infringe as little as possible
The clients must be instructed so that they are willing to give their consent
Any modern professional must find a way to combine several intrapersonal roles so that no moral conflicts ensue.
Professions, the Law, and Business
The goals of business are quite different from those of the professions. Therefore, if the profession must work under the constraints of business logic, it restricts the scope and autonomy of professional work.
The Future
If professions are supposed to provide a service to the public, although they now do not have monopoly of knowledge and they suffer from reduced autonomy and minimal authority, professions must change fast.
This means that their ethics of conduct will also be in the limelight. High standards of professional work and ethics are more important now than ever before
