Professional Studies - The Need for Professional Ethics and Responsibility in Design

What is Professional Ethics?

• Professional ethics includes relationships with and responsibilities toward customers, clients, coworkers, employees, employers, others who use one’s products and services, and others whom they affect.

• make critical decisions, situations where significant consequences for you and others could result.

• Customers rely on the knowledge, expertise, and honesty of the professional. A professional advertises his or her expertise and thus has an obligation to provide it.

• A professional can cause great harm through dishonesty, carelessness, or incompetence. Often the victims have little ability to protect themselves. The victims, often, are not the direct customers of the professional and have no direct control or decision-making role in choosing the product or making decisions about its quality and safety.

• A professional has an ethical responsibility not simply to avoid intentional evil, but to exercise a high degree of care and follow good professional practices to reduce the likelihood of problems.