MEANING AND NATURE OF PROFESSIONAL ETHICS

George Orwell: “On the whole human beings want to be good, but not too good, and not quite all the
time.”

MEANING:
What is Ethics?
The word ethics is derived from a Greek word 'ethos' meaning character. It is mainly known as the
principle of moral conduct that makes a distinction between good and bad/evil, right and wrong, virtue
and non-virtue. Ethics is a branch of knowledge that governs conducts and behaviors of individuals,
professionals, group or organization, on both the personal and professional level.

Karen L. Reich defines ethics as a systematic approach to understanding, analyzing and

distinguishing matters of right and wrong, good and bad, and admirable and deplorable as they
relate to the well-being of and the relationship among sentient beings.

Mackenzie defines ethics as ―the study of what is right or good in human conduct or ―the science of
the ideal involved in conduct. It is a branch of philosophy, specially the moral philosophy that studies the
evolution of concepts; such as right or wrong behaviour.

It involves the inquiry on the existing situations, form judgments and resolve the issues. In addition,
ethics tells us how to live, to respond to issues, through the duties, rights, responsibilities, and
obligations.
To understand what ethical behavior is, we also need to understand unethical behavior. An action or
conduct which violates the principles of one or more ethical systems, or which is counter to an
accepted ethical value, is deemed to be unethical and goes against everything that ethical stands for.
There arises a situation in every person's life where they have to choose ethical behaviour or the unethical
one, which is usually referred to as ethical dilemma. It is the decisive factor in determining how ethical
an individual is.

PROFESSIONAL ETHICS
Aristotle thought that one discovers virtue by using the unique gift of human reasoning, that is, through
rational contemplation. “The unexamined life is not worth living,” said Socrates almost 100 years
before Aristotle. Like Aristotle and Aristotle’s teacher Plato, Socrates knew that we humans need to
engage our brains before we open our mouths or spring into some decisive action.

Professional ethics are those values and principles that are introduced to an individual in a
professional organization. Also called work ethics, it is defined as a set of attitudes concerned with
the value of work, which forms the motivational orientation.

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 Each employee is meant to strictly follow these principles. They do not have a choice. Also, this approach
is imperative in professional settings as it brings a sense of discipline in people as well as helps maintain
decorum in offices.
Professional ethics is concerned with the standards and moral conduct that govern the profession and
its members. More specifically, professional ethics examines issues, problems, and the social
responsibility of the profession itself and individual practitioners in the light of philosophical and, in
some contexts, religious principles among which are duty and obligation.
Like values, professional ethics provide rules on how a person should act towards other people and
institutions in such an environment. Some examples may include confidentiality, fairness,
transparency and proficiency. These ethics make employees responsible.

Features of professional ethics:

 Openness  Transparency

 Privacy  Impartial

 Practical and un-biased  Loyal

Co-operative  Objective oriented

Professional ethics makes use of code of conduct, which has the following benefits to:

- the public, as they build confidence in the profession’s trustworthiness

- clients, as they provide greater transparency and certainty about how their affairs will be handled
- members of the profession, as they provide a supporting framework for resisting pressure to act
inappropriately, and for making acceptable decisions in what may be ‘grey areas’
- the profession as a whole, as they provide a common understanding of acceptable practice which
builds collegiality and allows for fairer disciplinary procedures
- others dealing with the profession, as the profession will be seen as more reliable and easier to
deal with.
- It ensures the economy (get job, create wealth, earn salary), productivity (wealth, profit), safety
(in workplace), health and hygiene (working conditions), privacy (raise family), security
(permanence against contractual, pension, and retirement benefits), cultural and social
development (leisure, hobby, and happiness), welfare (social work), environment (anti-pollution
activities), and above all offer opportunities for all, according to their abilities, but without
discrimination.

NATURE
- Scientific Nature: Ethics is a normative science which determines norms, moral values in a person and
an individual's character. It is a systematic explanation of what is right and what is wrong.

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- Variable Nature: Ethics is not static, it is not always the same. Human beings change and the morality
and ethical perspective in them also changes.
- Exclusively for Human Beings: Ethics can only be applied to human beings as we are the ones who have
the capacity for moral judgment. We cannot expect ethical behavior from animals, as they are not as
intelligent as human beings are. So, ethics is exclusively for human beings.

Some examples of professional ethics in different fields: bio ethics (for maintaining normal livelihood),
medical ethics (designed for a medical profession), computer ethics, engineering ethics, business ethics
(designed for business operation) and legal ethics (designed for maintaining a legal system).

What‘s the difference between personal and professional ethics?

The ethics that you adhere to in your personal life and those that you comply with in your professional
life are different in certain aspects. Without certain ethics, human beings would be incomplete and
shallow. Thus, they have different systems of ethics in different places. The biggest difference between
personal and professional codes of conduct is perhaps the strictness with which people conform to them.
The values that you define for yourself are up to you to be followed or not to be followed it might hardly
make a difference, depending on the circumstances. However, those defined in a company or by a
profession must be followed by you, since breach of these principles or rules may harm your reputation
and status.

For example let’s look at the professional ethical code of conduct of a physician:
1. A physician shall provide competent medical care, with compassion and respect for human dignity and
rights.
2. A physician shall uphold the standard of professionalism, be honest in all professional interactions and
strive to report physicians deficient in character or competence, or engaging in fraud or deception, to
appropriate entities.
3. A physician shall respect the law and recognize a responsibility to seek changes in those requirements
which are contrary to the best interests of the patient.

CONCLUSION:
Kant believed that certain acts such as lying had to be wrong because if everyone lied there would be no
way of knowing the truth. If everyone were false how would anyone have trust in anything? Thus truth
telling is a universal duty. In other words, communities cannot exist without some compliance with moral
rules.
Jack Marshall, goes on to say “creating an ethical culture is the shared obligation of everyone, and each
of us needs to think critically about what is right and wrong, make our opinions known, and never hesitate
to communicate those opinions for fear of being "judgmental". We should be judgmental – civil, fair,
open-minded, and also willing to hold ourselves to high standards of conduct.

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Whether ethics is a preferable way to induce professionals to behave as expected by society and their peers
depends on a complex interplay of law and morality. Law is insufficient as an ethical system. Codified
law focuses on actions and outcomes rather than values. The process by which legislation comes into force
is different from ethics. This is not to deny that that there is a moral authority to the law. The law has an
important role to play in enforcing minimum standards of what is right and what is wrong and enforcing
breaches, but rules can be misused. It is unlikely that we could have rules for everything. The legal and
ethical aspects of actions are not easy to disentangle, and will in fact often overlap. However, law and
ethics need not be in opposition; they can and should complement each other as a system of control over
human behaviour. Ethics, unlike law, are also about choice of behaviour.

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