What is professional ethics?
To understand the nature of professional ethics let us begin with the question: what is ethics? There are different definitions of ethics in different disciplines. To follow Menon (2006), in a broad sense “Ethics covers morals, moral principles and rules of behaviour. It essentially attempts to distinguish right from wrong. This cannot be something absolute and calls for judgements grounded in values.” It is obvious that ethical enquiry is always critical and normative. It compares an existing state with an ideal state (Muirhead, 1908).
Emile Durkheim (1957, 4-5), one of the founding fathers of sociology, defines professional ethics as follows:
No man exists who is not a citizen of a State. But there are rules of one kind where the diversity is far more marked; they are those which taken together constitute professional ethics. As professors, we have duties which are not those of merchants. Those of the industrialist are quite different from those of the soldier, those of the soldier from those of the priest, and so on. … We might say in this connection that there are as many forms of morals as there are different callings, and since, in theory, each individual carries on only one calling, the result is that these different forms of morals apply to entirely different groups of individuals. Of these morals, not only is one kind distinct from the other, but between some kinds there is real opposition. The scientist has the duty of developing his critical sense, of submitting his judgment to no authority other than reason; he must school himself to have an open mind. The priest or the soldier, in some respects, have a wholly different duty. Passive obedience, within prescribed limits, may for them be obligatory. |
|
