Introduction to Professional

Ethics

Lecture presented by
Ms. Hina Yousaf
 ‘‘WHY SHOULD I STUDY ETHICS? I am an
ethical person.’’

“Engineers and engineering students often ask this

question when the subject of professional ethics is raised,
and the short and simple answer to is: ‘‘You are not being
asked to study ethics in general, but your profession’s
ethics.’’
 What is a Professionalism?

• Full Definition of PROFESSIONALISM

• 1 : the conduct, aims, or qualities that characterize or mark a

profession or a professional person(see 1professional)

• 2 : the following of a profession (as athletics) for gain or

livelihood
You know that it's essential to be professional if you want to
be a success. But what does "being professional" actually
mean?

For some, being professional might mean dressing smartly at work, or doing a
good job.

For others, being professional means having advanced degrees or other

certifications, framed and hung on the office wall.

Professionalism encompasses all of these definitions. But, it also covers much

more.
Defining Professionalism

The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines professionalism as "the conduct,

aims, or qualities that characterize or mark a profession or a professional
person"; and it defines a profession as "a calling requiring specialized
knowledge and often long and intensive academic preparation."

These definitions imply that professionalism encompasses several different

attributes, and, together, these attributes identify and define a professional.
So, what are these attributes?
Specialized Knowledge

First and foremost, professionals are known for their specialized

knowledge.

They've made a deep personal commitment to develop and improve

their skills, and, where appropriate, they have the degrees and
certifications that serve as the foundation of this knowledge.

Not all areas demand extensive knowledge to practice successfully;

and not all professionals have top degrees in their field.
What matters, though, is that these professionals have worked
in a serious, thoughtful and sustained way to master the
specialized knowledge needed to succeed in their fields; and
that they keep this knowledge up-to-date, so that they can
continue to deliver the best work possible.
Competency

Professionals get the job done. They're reliable, and they

keep their promises.

If circumstances arise that prevent them from delivering

on their promises, they manage expectations up front,
and they do their best to make the situation right.

Professionals don't make excuses, but focus on finding

solutions.
Honesty and Integrity

Professionals exhibit qualities such as honesty and integrity .

They keep their word, and they can be trusted implicitly because of this.

They never compromise their values , and will do the right thing, even
when it means taking a harder road. More than this, true professionals
are humble – if a project or job falls outside their scope of expertise,
they're not afraid to admit this. They immediately ask for help when they
need it, and they're willing to learn from others.
Accountability

Professionals hold themselves accountable for their

thoughts, words, and actions, especially when they've
made a mistake.

This personal accountability is closely tied to honesty and

integrity, and it's a vital element in professionalism.
Self-Regulation
They also stay professional under pressure. For instance, imagine a customer service
employee who's faced with an annoyed customer. Instead of getting upset or angry
in return, the employee exhibits true professionalism by maintaining a calm,
business-like demeanor, and by doing everything that she can to make the situation
right.

Genuine professionals show respect for the people around them, no matter what
their role or situation.

They exhibit a high degree of emotional intelligence (EI) by considering the

emotions and needs of others, and they don't let a bad day impact how they interact
with colleagues or clients.
Image

Professionals look the part – they don't show up to

work sloppily dressed, with messy hair.

They're polished, and they dress appropriately for the

situation. Because of this, they project an air of
confidence, and they gain respect for this.
How to Exhibit Professionalism

Professionals are the kind of people that others respect and

value. They are a genuine credit to their organizations.

True professionals are the first to be considered for

promotions, they are awarded valuable projects or clients,
and they are routinely successful in their careers.
Now that you have a clear view of
what constitutes professionalism,
are you demonstrating these
characteristics to the people
around you?
Here are some further strategies that will help you be more professional in the
workplace:

1. Build Expertise

Don't let your knowledge and skills get outdated. Commit to build expertise and stay
up-to-date with your industry.

2. Develop Your Emotional Intelligence

Professionals can sense the emotional needs of others. They're able to give clients and
coworkers what they need, because they know how to listen actively and observe what's
happening. So, if you want to improve your professionalism, focus on developing
emotional intelligence.
3. Honor Your Commitments

Whenever you make a promise to your boss, colleagues, or clients, keep it. If it looks as
if you won't be able to meet a deadline, let your boss, team or client know as soon as
sensibly possible. However, do what you can to avoid ending up in this situation! Don't
make excuses – instead, focus on meeting expectations as best you can, and on making
the situation right.

4. Be Polite

Be kind and polite and use good manners to everyone you come into contact with, no
matter what their role is, and no matter how you're feeling. This might sound
unimportant, but it makes a significant impact.
5. Have the Tools You Need
Do you show up to a client meeting lacking important samples? Or arrive at
work, only to realize that you left a vital file at home? Or do you find
yourself operating in situations where you don't have the skills needed to
do a good job?

True professionals are always prepared. This requires planning, timeliness,

and attention. Focus on improving your time management and planning
skills, so that you're always in control.
 A Sociological Analysis of Professionalism

Among the several traditions of sociological analysis of the

professions, one of the most influential has a distinctly
economic orientation.

These sociologists view attaining professional status as a tactic

to gain power or advantage in the marketplace. Professions have
considerable power in the marketplace to command high
salaries, so they conclude that professional status is highly
desirable.
 Occupation VS Profession

• Occupation refers to the regular activity performed by a

person to earn his bread and butter. A profession is an
occupation or vocation which requires a high degree of
knowledge and expertise in the specific field.

• Although probably no profession has all of these

characteristics to the highest degree possible, the more
characteristics an occupation has, the more secure it is in its
professional status.
 1. Extensive Training
• Entrance into a profession typically requires an extensive period of training, and
this training is of an intellectual character.

• Professionals’ knowledge and skills are grounded in a body of theory. This

theoretical base is obtained through formal education, usually in an academic
institution. Today, most professionals have at least a bachelor’s degree from a
college or university, and many professions require more advanced degrees,
which are often conferred by a professional school.

• Thus, the professions are usually closely allied in our society with universities,
especially the larger and more prestigious ones. Although extensive training may
be required for professional work.
 2. Vital knowledge and skills
• Professionals’ knowledge and skills are vital to the well-being of the
larger society. A society that has a sophisticated scientific and
technological base is especially dependent on its professional elite.
• knowledge possessed by physicians to protect us from disease and
restore us to health.
• Lawyer’s knowledge for our welfare if we have been sued or accused of
a crime
• accountant’s knowledge for our business successes or when we have to
file our tax returns
• we are dependent on the knowledge and research of scientists and
engineers for our safety in an airplane
 3. Control of services

• Professions usually have a monopoly on, or at least considerable control

over, the provision of professional services in their area. This control is
achieved in two ways.

• First, the profession convinces the community that only those who have
graduated from a professional school should be allowed to hold the
professional title. The profession usually also gains considerable control
over professional schools by establishing accreditation standards that
regulate the quality, curriculum content, and number of such schools.
• Second, a profession often attempts to persuade the community that
there should be a licensing system for those who want to enter the
profession. Those who practice without a license are subject to legal
penalties. Although it can be argued that monopoly is necessary to
protect the public from unqualified practitioners, it also increases the
power of professionals in the marketplace.
 4. Autonomy in the workplace

• Autonomy at work means giving employees the freedom to

work in a way that suits them: whether that's deciding the
pace of their work, the order of task completion and having
more control over job tasks, or even the freedom to decide
when and where they do their work.

• Professionals often have an unusual degree of autonomy in the

workplace.
• This is especially true of professionals in private practice. Whether in
private practice or in an organizational setting, physicians must
determine the most appropriate type of medical treatment for their
patients, and lawyers must decide the most successful type of defense
of their clients. This is one of the most satisfying aspects of
professional work.

• The justification for this unusual degree of autonomy is that only the
professional has sufficient knowledge to determine the appropriate
professional services in a given situation.
 6. Claim to ethical regulation
• Professionals claim to be regulated by ethical standards, many of which
are embodied in a code of ethics.

• regulating themselves for the public benefit.

• Professional codes are ordinarily promulgated/implemented by

professional societies.

• Sometimes professional societies attempt to punish members who

violate their codes.
Professions as Social Practices
• A profession is an example of a social practice.
• Every social practice has one or more aims or goods that are especially
associated with it or ‘‘internal’’ to it.
• For example, medicine (along, of course, with nursing, pharmacy,
osteopathy, and the like) aims at the health of patients.
• One of the aims of law is justice.
• A practice may also produce other goods, such as money, social prestige,
and power… especially related to its moral legitimacy.
• a social practice is inconceivable without this distinctive aim. We cannot
imagine medicine apart from the aim of producing health or law without
the aim of producing justice.
• the aims of a social practice must be morally justifiable aims. Both health
and justice are morally praiseworthy aims.

• the distinctive aim of a social practice provides a moral criterion for

evaluating the behavior of those who participate in the social practice.
• if a medical practice does not promote ‘‘health,’’ we might wonder about its
moral legitimacy as a medical practice.

The advantage of this account of professionalism is that it has a distinctively

moral orientation and characterizes the professions as institutions that must be
not only morally permissible but also aim at some moral good. There cannot
be a profession of thievery or a profession of torturing because these
occupations are inconsistent with ordinary morality
Chapter 1: Ethics & Business
1.1 The Nature of Business Ethics
Morality & Ethics
Levels of Ethics
 MEANING AND DEFINITION OF ETHICS
• Ethics is defined as the study of "what is right or good in conduct”. The
word Ethics has been taken from Greek word “ethora” means character
and this is connected with custom or habit.

• Peter F. Drucker writes— "There is only one ethics, one set of rules of
morality, one code: that of individual behavior in which the same rules
apply to everyone alike.“

• According to the dictionary, the term ethics has several meanings. One of
the meanings given to it is: “the principles of conduct governing an
individual or a group.
We sometimes use the term personal ethics, for example, when referring to
the rules by which an individual lives his or her personal life.

We use the term accounting ethics when referring to the code that guides the
professional conduct of accountants.

A second—and for us more important—meaning of ethics according to the

dictionary is this: Ethics is “the study of morality.” Just as chemists use the
term chemistry to refer to a study of the properties of chemical substances,
ethicists use the term ethics to refer primarily to the study of morality.
Although ethics deals with morality, it is not quite
the same as morality.

Ethics is a kind of investigation—and includes both

the activity of investigating as well as the results of
that investigation—whereas morality is the subject
matter that ethics investigates.
 Morality
So what, then, is morality? We can define morality as the standards that an
individual or a group has about what is right and wrong, or good and evil. To
clarify what this means, let’s consider a case.

Read the case on page 13

Lawson believed that as an engineer he had an obligation “to do your best, no

matter what it cost,” and that Vandivier believed it was wrong to lie and to
endanger the lives of others, and believed also that integrity is good and
dishonesty is bad. These beliefs are all examples of moral standards.
Moral standards include the norms we have about the kinds of actions we
believe are morally right and wrong, as well as the values we place on
what we believe is morally good or morally bad.

Moral norms can usually be expressed as general rules about our actions,
such as “Always tell the truth,” “It’s wrong to kill innocent people,” or
“Actions are right to the extent that they produce happiness.” Moral
values can usually be expressed with statements about objects or features
of objects that have worth, such as “Honesty is good,” and “Injustice is
bad.”
 Where do moral standards come from?

• learned as a child from family, friends, and various

societal influences such as church, school, television,
magazines, music, and associations.

• experience, learning, and intellectual development

• may discard some standards that you decide are

unreasonable, and may adopt new standards
Moral standards can be contrasted with nonmoral standards and norms.
Examples of nonmoral standards and norms (sometimes also called
“conventional” standards and norms) include

• the standards of etiquette by which we judge people’s manners as good or

bad

• the rules of behavior set by parents, teachers, or other authorities

• the norms we call the law by which we determine what is legally right
and wrong
• the standards of language by which we judge what is grammatically right
and wrong

• the standards of art by which we judge whether a painting or a song is

good or bad

• and the sports standards by which we judge how well a game of football or
basketball is being played

In fact, whenever we make judgments about the right or wrong way to do

things, or judgments about what things are good and bad, or better and
worse, our judgments are based on standards or norms of some kind.
 How do we distinguish between moral and nonmoral or
conventional standards?

Look at the two lists of norms below and see if you can tell which is the list
of moral norms and which is the list of nonmoral norms:

The psychologist Elliot Turiel and several others have found that by the age of three, a
normal child has acquired the ability to tell the difference between moral norms and
conventional norms.
• By age three, the child sees violations of moral norms as more serious and
wrong everywhere, while violations of conventional norms are less
serious and wrong only where authorities set such norms.

• People in all cultures may not completely agree on which norms are moral
norms (although there is a surprising amount of agreement) and which are
conventional, but they all agree that the two are different and that the
difference is extremely important.

• philosophers have suggested six characteristics that help pin down the
nature of moral standards . Let’s discuss
First, moral standards deal with matters that are serious, i.e., matters that we
think can seriously wrong or significantly benefit human beings. For
example, most people hold moral standards against theft, rape, enslavement,
murder, child abuse, assault, slander, fraud, lawbreaking, and so on.

Second, and strikingly, we feel that moral standards should be preferred to

other values including (and perhaps especially) self-interest. That is, if a
person has a moral obligation to do something, then he or she is supposed to
do it even if this conflicts with other, conventional norms or with self-interest
Third, unlike conventional norms, moral standards are not established or
changed by the decisions of authority figures or authoritative bodies.

Fourth, moral standards are felt to be universal. That is, if we genuinely

hold that certain standards—such as “Do not lie” or “Do not steal”—are
moral standards, then we will also feel that everyone should try to live up to
those standards, and we will get upset when we see others transgressing
them.

Fifth, and generally, moral standards are based on impartial considerations.

Last, moral standards are associated with special emotions and a special
vocabulary. For example, if I act contrary to a moral standard, I will normally
feel guilty, ashamed, or remorseful; I will describe my behavior as “immoral”
or “wrong,” and I will feel bad about myself and experience a loss of self-
esteem.

Moral standards, then, are standards that deal with matters that we think are
of serious consequence, are based on good reasons and not on authority,
override selfinterest, are based on impartial considerations, and are associated
with special feelings such as guilt and shame, and with a special moral
vocabulary such as “obligation,” or “responsibility.” We learn these standards
as children from a variety of influences and revise them as we go through our
lives.
 Ethics
What, then, is ethics?
Ethics is the discipline that examines your moral standards or the moral
standards of a society. It asks how these standards apply to your life and
whether these standards are reasonable or unreasonable—that is, whether
they are supported by good reasons or poor ones.

Discussion on page 18

The ultimate aim of ethics is to develop a body of moral standards that you
feel are reasonable for you to hold—standards that you have thought about
carefully and have decided are justified for you to accept and to apply to
the choices that fill our lives.
Ethics is not the only way to study morality. The social sciences—such as
anthropology, sociology, and psychology—also study morality, but do so in
a way that is different from the approach to morality that ethics takes.
While ethics is a normative study of morality, the social sciences engage in
a descriptive study of morality.

normative study An investigation that attempts to reach conclusions

about what things are good or bad or about what actions are right or
wrong.

descriptive study An investigation that attempts to describe or explain

the world without reaching any conclusions about whether the world is
as it should be.
 Business Ethics
we are not concerned with ethics in general, but with a particular field of
ethics: business ethics.

Business ethics is a specialized study of moral right and wrong that focuses
on business institutions, organizations, and activities. Business ethics is a
study of moral standards and how these apply to the social systems and
organizations through which modern societies produce and distribute goods
and services, and to the activities of the people who work within these
organizations. Business ethics, in other words, is a form of applied ethics. It
not only includes the analysis of moral norms and moral values, but also tries
to apply the conclusions of this analysis to that assortment of institutions,
organizations, and activities that we call business.
Business ethics covers a wide variety of topics.
Three different kinds of issues that business ethics investigates:
systemic, corporate, and individual issues.

Systemic issues in business ethics are ethical questions raised about the
economic, political, legal, and other institutions within which businesses
operate. These include questions about the morality of capitalism or of the
laws, regulations, industrial structures, and social practices within which
businesses operate.
Corporate issues in business ethics are ethical questions raised about a
particular organization. These include questions about the morality of the
activities, policies, practices, or organizational structure of an individual
company taken as a whole.

Finally, individual issues in business ethics are ethical questions raised

about a particular individual or particular individuals within a company
and their behaviors and decisions.
 Objections to Business Ethics

• Many people raise objections to the very idea of applying

moral standards to business activities.

• Let’s discuss some of these objections and also look at what

can be said in favor of bringing ethics into business.
 First, some hav
e argued that in
markets, the pu perfectly comp
rsuit of profit w e t i t i ve f r e e
members of so ill by itself ens
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beneficial way i n t he m os t s oc
s. To be profita ially
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hat the membe as t o
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s oc i e t y v a l u e . m e m b e r s of
In a perfectly competitive free market,
there are numerous buyers and sellers,
none of whom have significant market
power to influence prices. All goods and
services are identical, and there are no
barriers to entry or exit for firms. Prices
are determined solely by supply and
demand forces, and all participants have
access to perfect information about
prices and product characteristics.
• First, most industrial markets are not “perfectly
competitive” as the argument assumes.

• Firms are said to be in perfect competition when the following

conditions occur: Many firms produce identical products. Many
buyers are available to buy the product, and many sellers are
available to sell the product.

• To the extent that firms do not have to compete, they can

maximize profits despite inefficient production.
• Second, the argument assumes that any steps taken to
increase profits will necessarily be socially beneficial.

• In fact, however, several ways of increasing profits actually injure

society such as: allowing harmful pollution to go uncontrolled,
deceptive advertising, concealing product hazards, fraud, bribery,
tax evasion, price fixing, and so on.
• Third, the argument assumes that, by producing whatever
the buying public wants (or values), firms are producing what all
the members of society want.

• But the wants of large segments of society (the poor and

disadvantaged) are not necessarily met when companies produce
what buyers want, because these segments of society cannot
participate fully in the marketplace.
•Fourth, the argument is essentially making a normative
judgment (“managers should devote themselves to the single-minded
pursuit of profits”) on the basis of some unspoken and unproved moral
standard (“people should do whatever will benefit those who
participate in markets”).

• Thus, although the argument tries to show that ethics does not matter,
it assumes an unproved ethical standard to show this. And the
standard does not look very reasonable.
 A second kind
of argument
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show that bu
should single siness manag
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of their firms rsue the inter
and should ig ests
nore ethical
consideration
s
LAW OF AGENCY
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pa ge 24. examp
les A law that specifies
the duties of persons
who agree to act on
behalf of another
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authorized by an
agreement so to act.
 A third kind
of objection
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ging ethics i s made
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n that to be s. This is
businesspeo ethical it is
ple to follow enough for
the law: If it
then it is et is legal,
hical.
Discussion o
n page 25
It is wrong, however, to see ethics as no more than what the law requires.
It is true that some laws require behavior that is the same as the behavior
required by our moral standards. Examples of these are laws that prohibit
murder, rape, theft, fraud, and so on. In such cases, law and morality
coincide, and the obligation to obey such laws is the same as the
obligation to be moral.
However, law and morality do not completely overlap. Some laws have
nothing to do with morality because they do not involve serious matters.
These include parking laws, dress codes, and other laws cov ering similar
matters. Other laws may even violate our moral standards so that they are
actually contrary to morality.