Q 2 2011 September Section B

a. What do you understand by Term ETHICS?

b. Why is it necessary for a professional body to have a
Code of Ethics?
C. Each of the eight clauses of the IESL code of ethics with
a specific issue which must be observed to ensure
compliance with the code of ethics. Identify each of these
and give a short description of the aspects covered by
each of the clause.

Ethics, also known as moral philosophy, is a branch of philosophy that

involves systematizing, defending and recommending concepts of right and
wrong conduct.
Professional ethics encompass the personal, organizational and corporate standards of behavior
expected of professionals.
Professionals and those working in acknowledged professions, exercise specialist knowledge
and skill. How the use of this knowledge should be governed when providing a service to the
public can be considered a moral issue and is termed professional ethics.
Professionals are capable of making judgments, applying their skills and reaching informed
decisions in situations that the general public cannot, because they have not received the relevant
training.
One of the earliest examples of professional ethics is probably the Hippocratic oath to which
medical doctors still adhere to this day.
What are Professional Ethics
Professional ethics is related to any work that a person does for an occupation
and his concern towards the society. Professional ethics carries additional moral
responsibilities.
Professional man or woman possesses distinctive qualifications which make them
unique in a society. Ethics is defined as the philosophical study of moral values and

rules. Profession means a type of job requires special training and that brings a fairly
high status, for example work connected with medicine, law and engineering
Professional ethics are the rules governing the conduct, transactions and relationships
within a profession and among its publics. The quality of action of any professional, will
necessarily, be adjudged upon their individual perceptions as well as the broad and
supreme vision deployed in day to day activities and interrelations among their own
brethren and others outside. The word professional ethics may at first blush, though
may signify mere moral conduct, as been rightly chosen to normatively provide
empirical evidence of the essentially to conform to professional standards and
conduct, benefiting the importance of the profession itself. Various criteria and practices
regarding professional ethics are described below.
How to practice Professional Ethics
Here 3 criteria is mentioned to practice Professional Ethics
1.

Knowledge

The job must include complicated skills, theoretical knowledge, a clear judgment and
caution. Preparation of a person to do a job requires some formal education like
technical studies as well as humanistic studies. This includes professional ethics.
2.

Organization

Some organizations must be formed for the profession. These must be accepted by the
public to set the standards for that profession, writing code of professional ethics and
also these organizations have to represent that profession to the public. For e.g.
societies like ISTE and IEEE.
3.

Public Good

The job must help the public by doing a favor to them quoted in its code of ethics.
So generally it can be said that an occupation is considered as a profession only when
professionals have got all the above mentioned criteria.

Responsibilities mentioned related with Professional Ethics

Professional responsibilities are considered to be the most basic and comprehensive
professional virtue in regard with Professional ethics. Responsibility refers to being
morally responsible as a professional. Responsibilities related with professional ethics

include a variety of specific virtues which are important in particular situations. These
virtues are:

1.

Self direction

These virtues in professional ethics are essential in exercising the moral autonomy and
the responsibility. These virtues are divided into 2 groups.
i)
Virtues which give focus on understanding and gaining knowledge
through perception. Examples are self-understanding and humble attitude of mind in
assessing a character.
ii)
The second group focuses its attention towards commitment and
understanding the actions such as courage, self-discipline, perseverance, loyalty to
commitments, self respect and integrity.

2.

Public spirited virtues

These virtues are based on the benefits of clients as well as general public who are
affected by the work of others.
Examples are justice, a sense of community and generosity. Justice includes a sense of
respect for rights of others in making their own decisions on the risks.
In a sense of community, there should be a clear and proper faith even without any
slight mistake; hope of factors for meaningful life within professional and public
communities. Generosity means helping others beyond minimum requirements. With
respect to professional ethics generosity include the voluntary services and spending
time, talent and money to the professional societies such as ISTE, IEEE and local
communities.
1.

Team work virtues

These virtues are known as intellectual virtues. These are base on the proficiency of an
individual about his technical skills and jobs. These virtues include competence i.e.
being well prepared for the tasks, diligence i.e. alertness to danger and careful attention
the tasks and creativity.

In professional ethics above said 4 categories may partially coincide with some general
virtues. They can be interrelated with other virtues known as Cardinal Virtues or Chief
Virtues such as wisdom, courage, temperament and justice.

i)

Integrity

Moral integrity refers to the unity on the basis of moral concern and honesty. Integrity is
the unity between responsibility of an individual in his personal and professional life.
Virtues of self respect and pride in the job can be made possible only with the help of
the integrity. Integrity prevents the attitude among the individuals that they are not
responsible for their wrong doings in the job. It creates an enthusiasm among the
individuals for achieving excellent performance in their job and also makes them to see
that the job is done well.
While talking about professional ethics maintaining integrity is possible only with the
attitude of compromise. They are the possible ways to keep relationships when
difference arises. Sometimes, they may lead to severe conflict between working life and
personal life.
So, for maintaining integrity, an individual must have the ability to identify reasonable
compromises and be should also be willing to reasonable compromises.
Honesty is also a basic thing needed for integrity in addition to unity. Honesty is based
on the aspects of truthfulness and trustworthiness.
In professional ethics truthfulness and trustworthiness are based on the following
virtues.
i)
Honesty in act means the individual should not steal, manipulate accounts
or get bribes and kickbacks.
ii)
Honesty in Speech means an individual should not mislead others by his
speech. He should not tell lies and also not withhold the information pertaining to others.
iii)
Honesty in beliefs is nothing but intellectual honesty. An individual should
not be deceptive and he should not avoid tricky the unpleasant truths and should not
hide the evidences favourable to others self-esteem and biases.

iv)
Discretion means that an employee should not interfere in the decisions
taken by the employer or the client. He should not interfere with matters confidential
information.
Honesty is the basic virtue which is essential for professionals to engage a good
relationship with the society and to fulfill the requirements in professional ethics.
i) Self respect
Valuing oneself in some morally suitable ways is known as the self-respect. To some
extent both terms self respect and self esteem are synonymous. But there are some
peculiar differences. First, Self respect is a moral concept and self esteem is a
psychological concept when talking about professional ethics. Secondly, self respect
means valuing oneself whereas self esteem refers to having a positive attitude may be
excessive or unwarranted.
Self respect has 2 forms namely recognition and appraisal.
Recognition is giving respect to other people as an individual. As per this, we have
responsibility to show recognition respect towards others and we should respect the
rights of others as a sense of our own rights.
Appraisal means properly valuing ourselves as how well we face moral standards and
our personal aims. Because of their good character, some people deserve higher
respect. This is a goal of professional ethics.
A sense of honour emphasizes the intensive feelings of self respect and its minimum
requirements. It conveys directly the pride in maintaining high professional stds, mental
agony in failing to meet minimum standards of professionalism and a feeling of guilt for
wrong doings.
Self control is the virtue of maintaining personal discipline in professional ethics. It
implies how to avoid weakness of will because of lack of effort, half hearted
commitments, temptation, self deception and excessive or distorting fear or hatred. Self
respect gives a strong motive for avoiding these weaknesses.
Courage is the tendency to face dangers and difficult jobs in rational ways and with self
control. On the basis of the dangers confronted-courage takes many forms such as
physical courage, social courage and intellectual courage.

All above mentioned virtues are the important facts while we practice professional ethics
as a professional. Business ethics wont make a sense to lead a meaningful life. It is a
must to implement professional ethics in a professionals life. Professional ethics will act
as a standard to keep a healthy life of a social wellbeing. Under above context IESL eight
code ethics and subsequent rules are formulated and published as IESL accepted code of ethics to
guide IESL members to maintained the professional standard as engineers. Now you can
describe the Code ethics briefly. All the above facts are not necessary but for your reference that
are included.