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CHAPTER 3: PROFESSIONAL ETHICS

Instructor: LTT. Xuan 1

Learning objectives
- Understand what is (are) profession(s) and
responsibilities in professions
- Understand what is (are) professional ethics, ethical
codes
- Understand steps in making ethical decision
- Understand types of the relationships between
professions and customers; and approaches to sales

Instructor: LTT. Xuan 2

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What is profession?
• “A vocation, a calling, one requiring advanced knowledge or training
in some branch of learning or science” (Oxford Shorter Dictionary)
• Have specialized knowledge and skill
To be a member of a profession is to:

• Have power of knowledge and the capacity to affect

society
• Have autonomy of practice. This varies according to
employment context
• Have a monopoly or near monopoly of a particular skill
• Have undergone an extensive period of training that
includes not simply skills, but a strong intellectual
element
• To be a member of a professional body that is responsible
for regulating standards, protecting rights or practice and
ensure proper training
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Instructor: LTT. Xuan

What is profession?
06 qualities of a professional practitioners of all disciplines:

• Integrity, openness and honesty, both with themselves and with

others
• Independence, to be free of secondary interests with other parties
• Impartiality, to be free of bias and unbalanced interests
• Responsibility, the recognition and acceptance of personal
commitment
• Competence, a thorough knowledge of the work they undertake to do
• Discretion, care with communication, trustworthiness

Instructor: LTT. Xuan 4

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• At the core of professionalism
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Instructor: LTT. Xuan 5

What is profession?

Features of a profession (engineers, medicine, dentistry, accountant, …)?

Instructor: LTT. Xuan 6

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What is profession?
3 main professional characters

1. Professional pride

2. Social awareness and concern

3. Environmental conscientiousness

Instructor: LTT. Xuan 7

What is professional ethics?

• Professional ethics: The ethical identity, codes and practices of
particular profession, such as the professions followed by
nurses, doctors, lawyers, or engineers, … (Robinson et al.
2007)

Instructor: LTT. Xuan 8

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What is ethical code?

Developed by organizations and professional institutions and used to
02 main ways:
-As guides, as reference in day-to-day decision-making
-As statement of organizations’ contract with society

• Define accepted standards of behaviors for the

group
• Promote high standards of practice
• Provide benchmarks by which members can
measure and develop their personal standards
• Define the ethical aspirations and identity of the
group both internally and in relation to the public
and communities around them
• Exhibit a level of maturity to the outside world
Instructor: LTT. Xuan 9

What is ethical code?

What information should professional ethical codes contain?
• Responsibility to the profession
• Responsibility to oneself
• Responsibility to the employer, with the member acting
as an employee
• Responsibility to client
• Responsibility to the other individual members of the
group or profession
• Responsibility to the community
• Responsibility to the environment
• Responsibility to other groups or professions
• Responsibility of confidentiality
• Statements of how it will be determined if members
have broken the institution’s ethical guidelines, and the
consequences if they are shown to have done so
Instructor: LTT. Xuan 10

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What is ethical code?

What information should professional ethical codes contain?

My associates
(other professionals,
citizens, countrymen)

MANKIND
Instructor: LTT. Xuan 11

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What is ethical reflection?

Discussion:

Reflect on what is your everyday method of

ethical decision-making. Share this with your
group-mate and discuss any differences in your
approaches.

Instructor: LTT. Xuan 12

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What is ethical reflection?

Steps in making ethical decision:

1. Data gathering
2. Value management
a. Personal ethical values
b. Professional ethical values (fundamental principles,
procedural principles)
c. Public values
d. Value conflict
3. Responsibility management (identifying
stakeholders, analysing stakeholders in term of
power and responsibilities, negotiating
responsibility)
4. Reflecting on options and planning
5. Implementing
Instructor: LTT. Xuan 13

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What is ethical reflection?

Case study 3.1 (p.51)

Instructor: LTT. Xuan 14

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Discussion
1. What do you see as the foundation of your ethical practice?
2. What informs your understanding of right and wrong, good
or bad behaviour?
3. Where does that understanding come from? Your family,
your culture, your community, your religion, your school,
your place of work, your university?
4. What difference do your different foundations make to each
other?

Instructor: LTT. Xuan 15

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Source: (Trang et al., 2014)

Instructor: LTT. Xuan 16

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Needs, Moral self-consciousness and

professional roles
What is a professional – customer relationship for?
1. Fundamental needs (from customer)
2. Moral self-consciousness: to satisfy certain sorts of
fundamental needs
3. Professional roles: self-understanding of the professional

Instructor: LTT. Xuan 17

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Customer and professional

What is a professional – customer relationship for?
5 elements of professional-customer relationship:

1. To analyse the customer’s need or

want
2. The consideration of alternative
responses to the customer’ need
3. To decide which from among the
alternatives the professional and the
customer will pursue
4. Implementation of the decision
5. Education – typically education of
(Faber 2003)

customer, but quite possibly

education of the professional, too
Instructor: LTT. Xuan 18

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Customer and professional

5 different types of professional – customer relationship
1. The agency relationship
Customer has the knowledge and skill to
analyse, consider alternatives, decide and
become educated
Or,
Professional has knowledge to meet his own
need and solve his own problem, but lacks
some resources – time, or physical skill

2. The paternalistic relationship

Professional has responsibility to analyse
from the problem of client, to consider
alternatives, and to decide upon one or more
of the alternatives
Client – only in implementation, not consider
Instructor: LTT. Xuan 19
alternatives, not be educated
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Customer and professional

5 different types of professional – customer relationship

3. The contractual relationship

Customers possesses a rather high level
knowledge of the problem area in the first
place
A contract – a legal entity, enforced by the
power of legal system

4. The affinity relationship

Responsibility may evolve and change from
time to time without any explicit contract
Customer trusts the professional because of
some connection, some confidence,
independent of the customer-professional
relationship Instructor: LTT. Xuan
20

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Customer and professional

5 different types of professional – customer relationship

5. The fiduciary relationship

Professional: analyse the customer’s
problem, lay out the available alternatives
and advice about them, educate customers
as necessary, implement some of all
decisions
Customer: make decision, implement some
- Customer use professional’s knowledge to
understand his/her need
- Customer use professional’s superior
expertise
- Customer relies upon skills and resources
professional has
- Considerable degree of customer freedom
Instructor: LTT. Xuan 21

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What is ethical reflection?

Exercise:

Case 4.1 and 4.2

Instructor: LTT. Xuan 22

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Customer and professional

Caveat emptor – “let buyer beware” 3 main approaches
- No longer appropriate to sales

Limited paternalism – typical element in professionalism

Professional with superior knowledge has an active duty
to explain the consequences of a decision

Paternalism – Professional with superior

knowledge make decision for customer to
protect him/her from some types of harm
Limited
paternalism
Instructor: LTT. Xuan 23

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Group exercise
- Choose a particular profession and search
its code of conduct (if any)
- Find actual scandal relating to that
profession
- Use ethical theories and professional ethics
understanding to analyse what is wrong or
right in your case
- Prepare slides and present your viewpoint
within 10-15 min to your classmates

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Instructor: LTT. Xuan

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