Ethics And The Professions

The most up-to-date professional ethics reader available, Ethics Across the Professions analyzes the complex ethical issues that arise in such fields as engineering, finance, healthcare, journalism, and law. Organized topically, the anthology covers what it means to be a professional, outlines several ethical models, and addresses key issues including deception in professional life, privacy, loyalty, social welfare, conflicts of interest, and self-regulation. The book includes detailed chapter introductions, several practical case studies at the end of each chapter, and provocative discussion questions on issues like "whistle-blowing," educating illegal immigrant children, sports, and advertisements for pharmaceutical companies. Ethics Across the Professions is especially suited for introductory professional ethics courses taught in philosophy departments as well as in business schools, nursing schools, and other professional programs.

How does one make the right choices when faced with ethical dilemmas? Social service professionals use a unique set of principles to guide their decisions within a broad and complex array of situations. Straight Talk about Professional Ethics, Second Edition provides readers with the guidelines that will help them make decisions in a manner that is clinically and ethically effective. This book explains the seven core concepts that guide ethical practice in the helping professions: self-determination, informed consent, competence, confidentiality and privacy, attention to conflicts of interest, maintenance of professional boundaries, and professionalism and integrity. Developing a commitment to the ethics of a profession and an understanding of how those ethics apply to commonly occurring workplace situations is a major element of professional preparation.

John Kultgen explores the ways morality and professional ideals are connected. In assessing the moral impact of professionalism in our society, he examines both the structure and organization of occupations and the ideals and ideology associated with professions. Differing from standard treatments of professional ethics, Ethics and Professionalism recognizes that it is the practices within the professions that determine whether rules and ideals are used as masks for self-interest or for genuinely moral purposes.

This new text provides students with the tools necessary to make ethically sound decisions in the professions they choose for themselves. The text combines lucid explanations of leading philosophical moral theories with detailed discussion of how those theories are to be applied. Each chapter concludes with short cases and questions to engage students in solving perplexing professional ethics issues.

Professionals, it is said, have no use for simple lists of virtues and vices. The complexities and constraints of professional roles create peculiar moral demands on the people who occupy them, and traits that are vices in ordinary life are praised as virtues in the context of professional roles. Should this disturb us, or is it naive to presume that things should be otherwise? Taking medical and legal practice as key examples, Justin Oakley and Dean Cocking develop a rigorous articulation and defence of virtue ethics, contrasting it with other types of character-based ethical theories and showing that it offers a promising new approach to the ethics of professional roles. They provide insights into the central notions of professional detachment, professional integrity, and moral character in professional life, and demonstrate how a virtue-based approach can help us better understand what ethical professional-client relationships would be like.

These essays look at the concept of professional ethics from a range of perspectives. It begins with a look at the concept of profession, asking if it is knowledge or an ideal of service; continues by looking at accountability; and finally, analyzes codes of conduct. The text also covers medical education, moral philosophy, and the ability to face criticism in a positive way.

In countries outside the developed world, although writers have written commentaries on specific legal codes, very little attention has been given to legal writing which has focused specifically on the ethics of the legal profession. This book makes a special contribution in that regard providing, as it does, a comparative study of prevailing efforts to enhance ethical standards in a profession potentially in crisis and under much public scrutiny. Countries which have been examined include the UK, the US, Canada, South Africa, and countries in the Pacific, South East Asia and the Caribbean. Valuable guidance and learning are provided on such topical issues as wasted costs orders, conflicts of interests, legal and judicial codes, confidentiality, privilege and the ethics of the criminal process, where the jury system comes in for critical evaluation. This book will be a valuable text on the ethics and status of the profession. It will be of considerable interest to law students, practitioners and legal academics, Bar Associations, Attorneys-General and Directors of Public Prosecutions as well as members of the judiciary.