Codes of Ethics

Codes of Ethics

One hallmark of a profession is its promotion of moral conduct among its practitioners and its willingness to establish ethical standards to guide practitioners’ behaviour (Callahan & Bok, 1980; Greenwood, 1957; Hall, 1968; Lindeman, 1947). Ideally, professionals exercise morally sound, autonomous judgement when confronted with ethical choices. In principle, ethical standards help professional practitioners identify ethical issues and provide meaningful guidelines to determine ethically acceptable or unacceptable behaviour. In reality, codes of ethics serve other functions as well. Codes provide measuring rods when licensing or other regulatory bodies assess whether a professional has complied with or departed from standards in the field. Employers may adopt a prominent code of ethics to provide its employees with a moral compass, regulatory bench mark and set of guidelines. Further, codes provide an opportunity for a profession to announce to the public the nature of its mission, moral ideals and principles, and guidelines for proper conduct. Codes of ethics may be ideological or principled language designed primarily to protect the public. Thus, codes serve many purposes and have multiple, sometimes conflicting, aims (Bayles, 1986; Brandl & Maguire, 2002; Freeman et al., 2004; Hugman, 2003; Kultgen, 1982; Lipsky, 1980; Montgomery, 2003).

Codes of ethics are designed to address three major issues (Jamal & Bowie, 1995). First, codes address problems of moral hazard, or instances in which a profession's self-interest may conflict with the public's interest. Such conflicts can occur in a variety of ways. Examples include whether investment company managers should be obligated to disclose conflicts of interest (e.g., when the company makes investments contrary to some clients' financial interests), whether dentists should be permitted to refuse to treat people who have an infectious disease, such as HIV or AIDS, and whether social workers should be expected to disclose to law enforcement officials confidential information about very serious crimes their clients have admitted committing.

Second, codes of ethics address issues of professional courtesy, that is, rules governing how professionals should behave to enhance and maintain a profession's integrity. Examples include whether lawyers should be permitted to advertise and solicit clients, whether psychiatrists should be permitted to [Page 300]criticise unethical or incompetent colleagues, whether psychologists should be prohibited from soliciting colleagues’ clients, and whether social workers should be expected to report colleagues who engage in unethical conduct.

Finally, codes of ethics address issues concerning professionals’ duty to serve the public interest. For example, to what extent should physicians and nurses be expected to assist vulnerable people when faced with a public emergency? Should dentists donate a portion of their professional time to provide services to low-income people who do not have private dental insurance or a government-sponsored coverage? Should social workers provide pro bono services to people in need who have difficulty paying for assistance?

It is important to recognise codes of ethics as political documents as well as guides to professional practice (Lipsky, 1980, Webb & McBeath, 1989). In their purest form, codes of ethics provide professionals with moral inspiration, values, and ethical norms. In reality, codes of ethics also serve political purposes. Many codes are created by voluntary professional associations whose principal purpose is to promote the profession, along with serving the public. These associations may use their codes of ethics to regulate their members’ ethical conduct, particularly when members of the public or clients allege ethical misconduct. In addition to using the code of ethics to protect the public, the profession also is using the code to protect itself. In this respect, codes of ethics can be self-serving documents, at least in part. Strict ethics-related prescriptions and proscriptions can serve to limit and constrain practitioners’ discretion and autonomous judgement. Further, social work codes of ethics frequently are used even more explicitly for political purposes when they are incorporated formally into legislation and governmental regulations. Many legislative, licensing, and regulatory bodies adopt codes of ethics, not to promote or protect the social work profession but, rather, to protect the public.

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