COMP427 Professional Ethics

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COMP427Professional Ethics
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Agree ?

• Ethics cannot be taught. You are able to sense
  what is right, good and just, and are motivated
  to act or you are not.
• 2. While people differ in their abilities, most
  people can improve their ethical decision-making
  through education and practice.

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Professional Ethics

• What is a profession?
• What is ethics?
• What is professional ethics?
• Ethical theories
• Thinking about professional ethics
• Professional values
• Codes of Ethics

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Dilemma

• The hijacked plane with 200 people is approaching
  a building with 50,000 people
• Vote! Will you shoot down the plane?

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Dilemma

• You cannot subscribe to both principles in the
  case.
• A true moral dilemma
• Which position has the greatest weight in the
  circumstances?

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• Profession
• Ethics
• Professional Ethics

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Profession

• All professions are occupations, but not all
  occupations are professions
• Can take a broad or narrow view of what is a
  profession
• A self-regulated occupational group capable of
  legally prohibiting others (including incompetent
  or unethical members) from practising is a
  narrow view

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Profession

• You are not a professional until you are a member
  of a group of colleagues who have articulated a
  set of standards and values and can enforce them,
  at the very least, by exclusion from the group.

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Professionalism

• 1. Skill, competency in work
• 2. Relational element work will be
  beneficial to others
• Work itself doesnt have moral status
• Execution of work has moral status

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Professional Ethics

• Purpose Helps professional decide when faced
  with a problem that raises a moral issue
• Complexity Can be many people, with many issues
  involved may be involved history to the issues
  may be an issue WHO decides, not just WHAT
  decided.

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Ethics and Morality

• Morality making choices with reasons
• Ethics the study of HOW the choices are made,
  ie ethics is the study of morality
• Often use ethics and morality interchangeably

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General vs Professional

• General Ethics individual as member of
  community, broader range of issues, top down
  principles
• Professional Ethics moral expectations specific
  to the occupational group, tend to focus on
  concrete bottom up cases

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Morality and Ethics

• Professional Morality what we do in our
  occupational lives
• Professional Ethics the study of what we do in
  our professional lives

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Ethics and Law

• Law the authority is external
• Ethics the authority is internal
• Much of law, but not all, is based in morality
• Sometimes law is unethical
• Much of what is ethical is unaddressed by legal
  rules

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Professional Ethics and Law

• There is a moral duty to obey the law (with some
  caveats)
• Professional ethics covers more issues than the
  law
• One can be unethical without behaving illegally
• Rare ethically must resist the law

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Professional Ethics and Law

• Be very careful not to embark in an exercise in
  ethical analysis when there is a clear legal rule
  in the situation that trumps the entire process
  of ethical analysis.

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Professional Ethics and Law

• Be very careful not to assume that there is a
  legal rule for every situation. Often the gaps
  between legal rules require one to switch to an
  ethical analysis.

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Ethics

• Descriptive ethics What IS
• Prescriptive ethics What OUGHT to be
• We do not seek to study professional ethics as a
  sociologist would, but to assist with choices
  about what one ought to do.

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Prescriptive Ethics

• What OUGHT to be
• The words used are different good-bad,
  right-wrong, just-unjust
• Thought processes use values, goods, virtues,
  rules, ethical theories, moral reasons, moral
  explanations, and moral decisions.

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Why the Interest in Professional Ethics?

1. As occupations become more specialized, the
   ethical issues become more specialized
2. Professional societies have increased efforts to
   establish ethical codes to guide members
3. Increasing public scrutiny, lack of traditional
   deference
4. Regulatory oversight, public protection

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Ethics in the Business World

• Globalization of organizations have created a
  complex business world.
• Risk is the likelihood of a negative event times
  the impact of the event.

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Why Business Ethics are Important?

• Protect the organization and its employees from
  legal action.
• Create an organization that operates
  consistently.
• Produce good business.
• Avoid unfavorable publicity.
• Gain the goodwill of the community.

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Legal Overview

• Bribes involve providing money, property, favors,
  or anything else of value to someone in business
  or government in order to obtain a business
  advantage.
• Gifts are made openly and publicly as a gesture
  of friendship or goodwill with no expectation of
  a future favor for the donor.

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Improving Corporate Ethics

• Appoint a corporate ethics officer.
• Ethical standards should be set by a board of
  directors.
• Establish a corporate code of conduct.
• Conduct social audits.
• Require employees to take ethics training.
• Include ethical criteria in employee
  appraisal/reward systems.

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Code of Conduct

• A guide that highlights an organizations key
  ethical issues and identifies the overarching
  values and principles that are important to the
  organization and that can help in decision
  making.
• The code of conduct helps ensure that employees
• Abide by the law.
• Follow necessary regulations.
• Behave in an ethical manner.

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Ethical Decision Making

• Get the facts.
• Identify the stakeholders and their positions.
• Consider the consequences of your decision.
• Weigh various guidelines and principles (Virtue,
  Utilitarian, Fairness, Common Good).
• Develop and evaluate options.
• Review your decision.
• Evaluate the results of your decision.

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Ethics in Information Technology

• The increased use of information technology has
  raised many ethical issues for todays IT
  professional.
• Licensing of IT professionals
• Internet communication
• Intellectual property
• Employee/employer issues