Introduction
An Introduction to Professional Ethics is an open educational resource written by Theodore Gracyk (PhD).
All text is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License, which permits anyone to use and modify any or all of the text of the book so long as:
- Attribution to this book and author are clearly provided; and
- No material is re-used for commercial purposes.
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Images are public domain in the United States or free for use under a non-commercial license. Re-use outside of the United States may be subject to restrictions based on local copyright laws.
Purpose and Guiding Perspective
This book is an introduction to ethical expectations and norms that hold for the consulting professions. The primary audience is pre-professionals. However, this is not a “how to” book. The approach is philosophical and fits into the field of applied ethics. The overall goal is to raise awareness of ethical challenges in professional life so that individuals have the background for self-reflection when they face these issues, either as professionals or as clients.
The book emphasizes ethical issues that arise when professionals advise clients.
The book is introductory. It presupposes no previous study of philosophy or ethics.
The book adopts a duty-based point of view.
The book assumes that business ethics and professional ethics are very different from each other.
The chapters are relatively independent of each other and can be assigned to students in any order. The one exception is that core concepts introduced in Chapter 2 are referenced in all subsequent chapters.
The book explores the special ethical challenges that arise in professional life and concentrates on the traditional professions, that is, ones in which professional work centers on advising clients. The goal is to explain how some issues are common to many professions. One example is the difficulty of upholding client autonomy in the face of the problems of competing interests, informed consent, and client confidentiality. Another example is the conflicts that arise when the duty to do what is best for a client comes into conflict with the commitment to serve the public good.
The complex issues that arise in research ethics are not included in this book. In many professional fields, such as medicine and social work, professionals have dual roles. On the one hand, they work with clients and assist them in dealing with problems in their lives. On the other hand, this advisory work is often combined with research about clients, their issues, and the efficacy of various responses to those issues. Some professionals devote themselves to nothing but research work. However, this book concentrates on professionals working with clients in an advisory role that addresses a client’s individual needs.
This book is not intended to be comprehensive. Many books on this topic devote space to a comparison of competing positions within normative ethics (e.g., virtue ethics, consequentialism). This book does not. An instructor who thinks that normative theory should be covered will have no difficulty finding material elsewhere.
The normative framework of the book builds from the assumption that most adults are autonomous individuals and deserve to be treated as such. The book devotes very little space to contrary views. (There is, however, discussion in Chapter 7 of how professionals should proceed with clients who reject this core assumption.) For the most part, the book explores the numerous implications of this core assumption for professional life.
The author’s formal training in applied ethics was directed by Professor Fred Berger of the University of California at Davis, in whose name the American Philosophical Association awards the Fred Berger Memorial Prize.
Outline
The chapters contain very few citations of specific source material. The material presented here has been developed over the course of twenty years of continuous teaching of professional ethics, during which the author taught a wide range of material, including several standard textbooks from academic publishers. This book is the synthesis of those many sources. Details of sources, plus suggested further readings, can be found in the appendix.
Chapter 1: What is a profession?
- Identify the major professions
- Identify the basic features of the professions
- Understand why most occupations are not professions
- Distinguish between customers and clients
- Understand the role of professional organizations
- Understand the functions of licensure
Chapter 2: The Fiduciary Relationship
- Understand why law does not establish morality
- Define duty
- Define prima facie duty
- Distinguish between positive and negative duties
- Distinguish between different uses of the term “fiduciary”
- Define the fiduciary relationship between professionals and clients
- Understand the range of duties associated with the fiduciary relationship
- Contrast fiduciary, paternalistic, agency, and contract relationships
- Understand the limited role of paternalism in professional relationships
Chapter 3: The fiduciary relationship: Is it the correct approach?
- Understand the concern that professional are amoral service providers
- Understand the proposal that the fiduciary relationship demands a suspension of personal judgment
- Define egoism
- Understand responses to proposals about amoral professionalism and egoism
- Define integrity
- Understand how integrity supports the fiduciary relationship
- Understand why loyalty is not a distinct duty
Chapter 4: Upholding Client Autonomy
- Define autonomy
- Understand that autonomy develops over time
- Understand the core limitations on the exercise of autonomy
- Understand the reason for universal free public education
- Review obstacles to an autonomy-based model of education
- Define academic freedom
- Outline reasons why professionals refuse their services
- Understand the doctrine of recusal and referral
- Define pro bono service
- Understand controversies related to pro bono service
Chapter 5: Informed consent and conflict of interest
- Define informed consent
- Understand informed consent as a complex process
- Define duty of disclosure
- Address common mistaken assumptions about informed consent
- Understand the “average, reasonable” person test and its application
- Understand how lies display a lack of respect for client autonomy
- Define therapeutic privilege
- Understand the limits on claiming therapeutic privilege
- Define conflict of interest
- Understand conflict of interest in multiple professions
- Understand how to proceed if conflict of interest is unavoidable
- Define nepotism
- Understand why nepotism is a serious issue
Chapter 6: Confidentiality and its limits
- Define privacy and secrecy
- Define duty of confidentiality
- Understand why it is significant that it is a prima facie duty
- Understand the criteria of being credible, clear, serious, and immanent
- Understand the distinction between mandatory reporting and discretionary reporting
- Understand why discretionary reporting is preferable to mandatory reporting in professional life
- Define whistleblowing
- Define supererogatory action
- Define complicity
- Understand when complicit professionals have a duty of whistleblowing
Chapter 7: Justice and cultural sensitivity
- Define distributive justice
- Recognize disparities in access to professional jobs and service
- Understand why professional services should not be luxury goods
- Define unfair discrimination
- Understand how tradition can generate unfair discrimination
- Understand the libertarian model of justice
- Understand the consequentialist model of justice
- Understand the egalitarian model of justice
- Understand the need for cultural sensitivity
