Professional Values and Ethics
Values - beliefs of a person or social group in which they have an emotional investment
(either for or against something).
Ethics - motivation based on ideas of right and wrong.
Values can be defined as psychological objects. We cannot physically touch or see them
but they are just as real as any physical object. You can dedicate yourself for the rest of your life
to pursue your values. Many have given their lives, as patriots do fighting for equal human rights
and freedom. Values help guide us and the decisions we make. For example, there are people
who value honesty and cannot bring themselves to lie about anything. There are people who
value friendships and will put others first before their own personal interests. There are people
who cannot do something wrong because they value being good. There are many ways to express
our values to others by being trustworthy, honest, reliable, loyal, clean accurate, organized,
punctual, and many others.
Ethics can be defined as knowing the difference between right and wrong. We know that
by our values, our beliefs, we need to make choices. Making the right or wrong choice depends
on your beliefs. But just because you believe it is the right choice. That does not mean it is
ethical. For example, someone walking by drops a ten dollar bill on the ground. You see what
happened and pick up the ten dollar bill. Instead of you going to the person that dropped it and
giving it back you keep it because “finders keepers, losers weepers”. Ethics and values go hand
in hand. They balance each other out to give us a more rightful or wrongful answer about the
way we conduct ourselves and the choices we make.
Sources of professional values can include individual beliefs and backgrounds, societal expectations and organizational values and codes of conduct. Professional values and ethics guide our actions and the way we conduct ourselves in any professional environment....