Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Ethics and
Professionalism
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What is a Profession?
Narrow definition: limits professions to
learned professions: medicine, law,
architecture and Engineering
Broad definition: virtually all occupations
More common definition: learned
professions, scholars, teachers, engineers,
scientists, accountants, business
specialists, journalists, government
officials
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What is a Profession?
A profession serves the general welfare in
a complex society. The general welfare can
be achieved only by assigning the
responsibility for special aspects of the
welfare of particular groups to specialized
experts.
IF patron loyalty takes priority over
public interest...., the stream of
professional practice will be polluted.
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What is ethics?
Refers to ideals and aspirations as well as
rules of conduct
Concern is not with rules, but with the
outlook, the conception of mission and the
responsibility they reflect
Comprehensive norms that generate rules
or concrete objectives or modes of being
Importance of
Professional Ethics
Professionals occupy a strategic position in
modern society
shape our ideas
make decisions that affect large numbers of
people without their consent or knowledge
services are highly valued
service the major economic, political, and
cultural institutions of industrial society
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Ethical dilemmas
Professionals face ethical dilemmas
How they resolve these dilemmas
determine
the moral quality of their lives
the welfare of those affected by their
action
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Three Primary
Philosophies of Ethics
Deontological: focus on absolute
obligations that overrule a simple
argument as to the desirability of the
consequences of an action.
Teleological: focus on the comparative
amount of good produced as the
consequences of an action.
Contractarian: focus on explicit and
implicit contracts formed in society and
are often established through social
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norms.
Principle of Utility
1. To judge the morality of actions, we
must estimate their utility. A
things utility means its probable
contribution to the happiness and
reduction of unhappiness, less its
probably contribution to the
unhappiness and reduction of
happiness of people. This value is
determined intuitively.
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Principle of Utility
2. We must be cognizant of our
inevitable ignorance of other who
may be affected by our actions.
Conversely, we must assume that
certain interests are basic for
everyone. In addition our perception
of our needs is not always correct.
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Principle of Utility
3. Until we identify differences among
those affected by our actions, we should
treat them alike. Since we must think
first in terms of basic needs, we should
strive to see that all receive a fair share
of these. Basic goods are precisely those
which everyone or almost everyone needs
for happiness.
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Principle of Utility
4. Informed individuals are usually the
best judges of what will make them
happy, even though they often must
resort to experts to achieve it.
Professionals should defer to the
wishes of competent clients.
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Professions and
Institutions
While there are individual considerations
that must be made as a professional,
parameters for individual choices and their
consequences are determined by their
institutional context.
The institutions within which professionals
practice empower them to act and provide
them with considerable autonomy in action,
while setting limits to those actions.
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Professions as Institutions
Individuals who participate in
institutions may be replaced without
altering expectations for their
successors, institutions endure
beyond the tenure of particular sets
of role occupants and have
characteristics different from those
occupants.
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Professions as Institutions
Individuals must choose whether to enter a
profession and what profession to enter
They must decide where to place themselves
in their chosen profession and institutions
and how to play their roles there
They must decide whether and how to try to
effect changes in the profession, its
structure and practices
Social structure is a given but it is not so
tight and obdurate as to preclude discretion
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Personal Considerations
What is my true vocation?
Whom do I want to serve and how?
What stance should I take toward the practices of
the occupation charged with this kind of work?
Should I follow the code of the group or my own
lights?
Should I be active in the formal organizations of
the profession or ignore them?
Should I pursue the causes of the group?
Should I devote time to influencing its practices or
the policies?
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Personal Considerations
Ask yourself, How am I to decide
whether an occupation is worthy of
lifelong dedication unless I assess the
impact on human welfare?
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Professions, Institutions
and Society
Our own society is not a perfect moral
organism nor are professions perfect
organisms in society, but they approach
the ideal sufficiently for moral persons to
utilize them as vehicles for action. There
is no way to act apart from society. The
moral life can be achieved only by working
through and beyond the roles provided by
imperfect institutions in an imperfect
society.
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Some Thoughts
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