Download Unit 7- Professional Ethics

Ethical Awareness
Professional Ethics
Unit 7
Professional Ethics
Professional ethics carries additional moral
responsibilities.
It could mean professional individuals possess
distinctive qualifications which make them
unique in a society.
Ethics is defined as the philosophical study of
moral values and rules.
What does the word ‘profession’ mean?
‘Profession’ means a type of job requires special
training and that brings a fairly high status.
Examples of professions, work connected with
medicine, law and education..etc.
What is Professional ethics?
Professional ethics are the rules governing the
conduct, transactions and relationships within a
profession and among its publics.
The word professional ethics may at first blush,
though may signify mere moral conduct, as been
rightly chosen to normatively provide empirical
evidence of the essentially to conform to
professional standards and conduct, benefiting the
importance of the profession itself. Various criteria
and practices regarding professional ethics are
described below.
How to practice Professional Ethics?
We have three criteria to practice professional ethics:
1. Knowledge:
The job must include complicated skills,
theoretical knowledge, a clear judgment and
caution. Preparation of a person to do a job
requires some formal education like technical
studies as well as humanistic studies. This
includes professional ethics.
2. Organization:
Some organizations must be formed for the profession.
These must be accepted by the public to set the
standards for that profession, writing code of professional
ethics and also these organizations have to represent that
profession to the public. For e.g. Bar Association.
3. Public Good:
The job must help the public by doing a favor to them
quoted in its code of ethics.
So generally it can be said that an occupation is
considered as a profession only when professionals have
had all the above mentioned criteria.
Responsibilities mentioned related with Professional
Ethics
Professional responsibilities are considered to be the most
basic and comprehensive professional virtue in regard
with Professional ethics.
Responsibility refers to being morally responsible as a
professional.
Responsibilities related with professional ethics include a
variety of specific virtues which are important in particular
situations.
Some of these virtues are:
1. Self direction
2. Public Spirited Virtues
3. Teamwork Virtues
These virtues are:
1. Self direction:
These virtues in professional ethics are essential in
exercising the moral autonomy and the responsibility.
These virtues are divided into 2 groups.
i) Virtues which give focus on understanding and gaining
knowledge through perception. Examples are selfunderstanding and humble attitude of mind in assessing a
character.
ii) The second group focuses its attention towards
commitment and understanding the actions such as
courage, self-discipline, perseverance, loyalty to
commitments, self respect and integrity.
2. Public spirited virtues:
These virtues are based on the benefits of
clients as well as general public who are affected
by the work of others. Examples are justice, a
sense of community and generosity.
Generosity means helping others beyond
minimum requirements.
With respect to professional ethics generosity
include the voluntary services and spending
time, talent and money to the professional
associations and local communities.
Team work virtues
These virtues are known as ‘intellectual virtues’.
These virtues include:
1. competence: being well prepared for the tasks.
2. diligence: alertness to danger and careful
attention the tasks and creativity.
3. Integrity
Moral integrity refers to the unity on the basis of
moral concern and honesty. Integrity is the unity
between responsibility of an individual in his
personal and professional life.
4. Honesty
is also a basic thing needed for integrity in addition to unity.
Honesty is based on the aspects of truthfulness and
trustworthiness.
Honesty has two forms as follows:
i) Honesty in act means the individual should not steal,
manipulate accounts or get bribes and kickbacks.
ii) Honesty in Speech means an individual should not mislead
others by his speech. He should not tell lies and also not
withhold the information pertaining to others.
Other professional ethics virtues:
Discretion:
means that an employee should not interfere in the decisions
taken by the employer or the client. He should not interfere
with matters confidential information.
Self respect:
Valuing oneself in some morally suitable ways is
known as the self-respect.
To some extent both terms self respect and self
esteem are synonymous. But there are some
peculiar differences.
First, Self respect is a moral concept and self
esteem is a psychological concept when talking
about professional ethics. Secondly, self respect
means valuing oneself whereas self esteem refers
to having a positive attitude may be excessive or
unwarranted.
Self respect has 2 forms namely ‘recognition’ and
‘appraisal’.
Recognition: is giving respect to other people as an
individual. As per this, we have responsibility to
show recognition – respect towards others and we
should respect the rights of others as a sense of our
own rights.
Appraisal: means properly valuing ourselves as how
well we face moral standards and our personal aims.
Because of their good character, some people
deserve higher respect. This is a goal of professional
ethics.
Conclusion:
All above mentioned virtues are the important
facts while we practice professional ethics as a
professional.
It is a must to implement professional ethics in a
professional’s life. Professional ethics will act as
a standard to keep a healthy life of a social
wellbeing.
End of Unit 7