productive reason See THEORETICAL REASON. professional ethics, a term designating one or more of (1) the justified moral values that should govern the work of professionals; (2) the moral values that actually do guide groups of professionals, whether those values are identified as (a) principles in codes of ethics promulgated by professional societies or (b) actual beliefs and conduct of professionals; and (3) the study of professional ethics in the preceding senses, either (i) normative (philosophical) inquiries into the values desirable for professionals to embrace, or (ii) descriptive (scientific) studies of the actual beliefs and conduct of groups of professionals. Professional values include principles of obligation and rights, as well as virtues and personal moral ideals such as those manifested in the lives of Jane Addams, Albert Schweitzer, and Thurgood Marshall.
Professions are defined by advanced expertise, social organizations, society-granted monopolies over services, and especially by shared commitments to promote a distinctive public good such as health (medicine), justice (law), or learning (education). These shared commitments imply special duties to make services available, maintain confidentiality, secure informed consent for services, and be loyal to clients, employers, and others with whom one has fiduciary relationships. Both theoretical and practical issues surround these duties. The central theoretical issue is to understand how the justified moral values governing professionals are linked to wider values, such as human rights. Most practical dilemmas concern how to balance conflicting duties. For example, what should attorneys do when confidentiality requires keeping information secret that might save the life of an innocent third party? Other practical issues are problems of vagueness and uncertainty surrounding how to apply duties in particular contexts. For example, does respect for patients’ autonomy forbid, permit, or require a physician to assist a terminally ill patient desiring suicide? Equally important is how to resolve conflicts of interest in which self-seeking places moral values at risk. See also APPLIED ETHICS , BIOETHIC. M.W.M.