PROFESSIONAL ETHICS

What is a profession: It’s a vocation or calling especially one that involves a specific branch of
advanced learning or a branch of science, for example, the profession of a doctor, scientist or a
business manager.

PROFESSIONAL:

A professional is one who is engaged in a specified activity as one’s paid occupation like a
salaried business manager who is paid for his specific skills in managing the affairs of the
business enterprise he is engaged in.

PRINCIPLES OF PROFESSIONAL ETHICS:

1. Impartiality: objectivity
2. Openness: full disclosure
3. Confidentiality: trust
4. Due diligence/duty of care
5. Fidelity to professional responsibilities
6. Avoiding potential or apparent conflict of interest.

PROFESSIONAL ETHICS:

Professional ethics are those values and principles that are introduced to an individual in a
professional organization. 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. 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
Personal vs. Professional Ethics:

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. 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. But if you do not adhere to your personal
ethics, it might hardly make a difference, depending on the circumstances. Even then,
you must keep in mind that violation of your own rules may harm others around you.

Personal Ethics Professional Ethics

Includes your personal values and Rules imposed on an employee in a company, or as

moral member of

qualities. a profession, e.g. doctor or lawyer.

Learnt when you are a part of a professional setting or

Incorporated by family, friends and when

surroundings since your childhood. you are being trained or educated for working there.

Examples: no gossiping, time management, punctuality,

Examples: honesty, care, and

sincerity.

confidentiality, transparency.

Not conforming to these may harm

or

Not adhering to these may harm your professional

reputation.
hurt others.

Your personal needs are satisfied by

Your professional needs are satisfied by following these.

following these.

OBJECTIVES (WHY NEED PROFESSIONAL ETHICS?)

It is intended to develop a set of beliefs, attitudes, and habits that professionals should display
concerning morality. The prime objective is to increase one‘s ability to deal effectively
with moral complexity in management practice. Alternatively, the objectives of the
study on Professional Ethics may be listed as:

(A) Improvement of the cognitive skills (skills of the intellect in thinking clearly)

1. Moral awareness (proficiency in recognizing moral problems in engineering)

2. Cogent moral reasoning (comprehending, assessing different views)

3. Moral coherence (forming consistent viewpoints based on facts)

4. Moral imagination (searching beyond obvious the alternative responses to issues and
being receptive to creative solutions)
5. Moral communication, to express and support one‘s views to others.

(B) To act in morally desirable ways, towards moral commitment and responsible conduct

6. Moral reasonableness i.e., willing and able to be morally responsible.

7. Respect for persons, which means showing concern for the well-being of others &
self.

8. Tolerance of diversity i.e., respect for ethnic and religious differences, and acceptance
of reasonable differences in moral perspectives.

9. Moral hope i.e., believing in using rational dialogue for resolving moral conflicts.

10. Integrity, which means moral integrity, and integrating one‘s professional life and
personal convictions.
Types of professional ethics:

1. Meta ethics: (origin of ethical principle)

It deals with origin of ethical principles that govern the specification of right and wrong
behaviour. A major issue of debate in this category is whether ethical principles are
eternal truths that evolved from a spiritual world or simply created by the humans.

2. Descriptive ethics: (moral beliefs)

It refers to the study of moral beliefs of the people. It is a field of empirical research
into what people or societies consider right or wrong.

3. Normative ethics: (self moral conduct)

It is concerned with arriving at set of moral conduct rules against which behaviour are
judged.

4. Applied ethics:
The ethical principles are designed or written for implementation in a specific situation.

a. Bio ethics: These are the ethical principles or codes for maintaining normal
livelihood.

b. Medical ethics: The ethical principles or codes designed for a medical profession.

c. Computer ethics: The ethical principles or codes designed for a medical

profession.

d. Engineering ethics: The ethical principles or codes designed for an

engineering profession.
e. Business ethics: The ethical principles or codes designed for a business operation

f. Legal ethics: The ethical principles or codes designed for maintaining a legal
system.

Six basic Properties of Professional Ethics as per Abbot

*Nearly all professions have some kind of formal ethical code.

*Belief in, and compliance with, formal ethical codes tends to enhance intra‐
professional status.

*Professional ethics codes address individual professionals and individual

actions.
 *Most ethical codes have a preamble that describes an ideal of service to
the public— setting up a social compact.
*Most ethical codes are related to maintaining a level playing field among
professionals, the remainder focus primarily on obligations to clients.
*Formal prosecution under professional ethics rules is common when the
offense is publicly visible. Intra‐professional violations are less severely punished.

Need & Importance:

Every company or business needs their own set of ethics and standards for several reasons.

Some of the important reasons are:

1. Success.

2. Checking Tool.

3. Integrity.

4. Mutual Respect.

1. Success:
Success is the most important reason for need of professional ethics. A company should give
their employees in writing the list of moral and ethics codes that they have to follow. In the
world, every singles person’s individual set of morals and ethics differ.

In the workplace, all these individuals come together and work under the same roof. If one
person’s ethics is totally against another person’s set of ethics, then this will lead to confusion
and politics. No professional organization can afford to have warring factions within their office
if they have to conduct business successfully.

2. Checking Tool:
Work place ethics act as a moral police and check the employees when they are wrong. An
employee, who knows what the work ethics are, will not go wrong and live up to the business
standards. This is the biggest advantage that an organization gets by defining a set code of
ethics.

3. Integrity:
Integrity is one thing that every business should have. When employees follow work ethics,
they show integrity to the outside world. Customers believe in the company and also business
prospects increase. Every industry has its own ethical guidelines, and a business should make
sure that they follow these standards.

4. Mutual Respect:
Mutual respect also should be one of the strongest ethical points for a company. When
employees respect each other, then everyone else, including the customers, respect the
business.

Professional ethics are important for several reasons as explained below:

(a) Ethics corresponds to basic human needs:
It is a human trait that the man desires to be ethical, not only in his private life but also in his
profession/business affairs where, being a manager, he knows his decisions will affect the lives
of thousands of employees.

Also, most people want to be a part of an organisation which they can respect and be publically
proud of, because they perceive its purpose and activities to be honest and beneficial to
society.

These basic ethical needs compel the organisations/business enterprises to be ethically

oriented.

(b) Ethics create credibility with the public:

A company ethically and socially responsive is honoured in the society, people favour its
products and its public issues attract an immediate response.

(c) Ethics give management credibility with employees:

The management automatically gets credibility with its employees when it has credit with the
public. The leadership and the people (employees) come and work together.

(d) Ethics help better decision making:

An ethical attitude of management helps making decisions in the interest of public, their
employees and the company.

(e) Ethics and profit:

Ethics and profit go together. Value driven companies are always successful in the long run.

(f) Ethics can protect society:

What ethics can do, probably government, and law cannot, to protect society. For example, an
ethical oriented management can prevent pollution and protect the health of their workers,
and people in general, much before being mandated by law.

Professional ethics are important for several reasons.

First, most professionals have an informational advantage over those they serve. This power
asymmetry can be exploited to the advantage of the professional and thus there needs to be a
corresponding sense of professional responsibility that obligates the professional to act in the
client's best long term interest and, additionally, to take appropriate safeguards and to make
necessary disclosures and to secure consent to protect the client and assure the professional's
behavior is on the up-and-up. Professional ethics will provide the useful function of identifying
these moral hazards and providing the appropriate avoidance or work-around strategies.

Second, most professional are, at some point, young and inexperienced professionals. Thus
professional ethics represents a kind of collective, time-tested wisdom that is passed on to new
professionals: watch out for this or do that. Also with changing laws, technologies and mores,
professional standards will work to keep the profession abreast of new ethical challenges and
emerging responsibilities and best practices.

Thirdly, professional ethics act as a somewhat effective countervailing power to organizational

influence or the power of authority (say, from a supervisor or boss). Thus accountants have
standards for reporting earnings and should not be swayed by a boss who says, in effect, "make
the numbers work" so that we hit our earnings estimate.

Finally, insofar as professional ethics often get promulgated by professional organizations, they
may play a role in enforcement and disciplinary action with respect to those who violate such
standards.