A Healthy Disrespect for the Law: The 2025 Mawhinney Lecture in Professional Ethics

After rereading Freedman's original essay, I still find my earlier interpretations to be legitimate renderings of the essay. I must apologize, however, for not supplying the further exegesis warranted by his astute Response. I want to use the allotted space for clarifying further the substantive issues over which we differ concerning the relationship between professional and ordinary morality. The following is a list of a few things that might be meant in drawing a distinction between professional and ordinary morality. They constitute only rough sketches of definitions based upon, respectively, de facto standards, the content of justified principles, the origin of justified principles, and professional status viewed as an act-permitting condition: (1) Professional morality consists of the standards endorsed by professionals or professional societies. Ordinary morality is the set of standards people endorse in their nonprofessional, private lives. (2) Professional morality is the set of binding moral obligations to which professionals ought to be committed because of their special skills, functions, working milieu, etc. Ordinary morality is the set of valid moral considerations and morally correct judgments considered in abstraction from the special context of the professions and the specific moral obligations of professionals. (3) Ordinary morality in some sense 'emanates from' or has its origin (or justification?) in basic features of the human condition, whereas professional morality derives from the special roles of professionals. (4) Professional morality is a set of valid moral principles which sometimes acts that are immoral for anyone except persons having professional status. Ordinary morality is the set of considerations which make the acts immoral in the case of nonprofessional agents. We may set aside 1. In my earlier essay I ascribed 2 to Freedman, not 3. In his Response, Freedmancommits himself to the combination of 3 and 4. Following Freedman's lead, I want to focus on 4. In his words, it requires that professional morality call upon us to do acts (or to refrain from doing acts) whose omission (or performance) be immoral, save for the fact of the actor's professional identity. Ordinary morality consists in what a person would be obliged to do save for the fact of belonging to this profession. These are presented in the Response as

Background: Professional values have been described as the 'basic and fundamental beliefs, the unquestioned premises upon which its [a profession's] very existence rests'. Over the past decade, physiotherapy practice has moved increasingly into wider and more diverse contexts. Patients have the right to equal, respectful treatment. Nowadays, one third of patient complaints concern health care staff's behavior towards patients. Objective: To find out the awareness about professional values among physiotherapy students and to find out the awareness about perception of knowledge regarding professional ethics in physiotherapy students. Methods: A total of 388 students participated in the study. Axiologic estimation of professional values questionnaire and Perceptions of knowledge regarding professional ethics in physiotherapy questionnaire were given to the participants. Data was collected and analysis was done using Ms Excel. Results: 90% of the students considered responsibility and simplicity as highly compulsory professional values and abnegation as the lowest compulsory. The level of importance of other professional values varies with respect for life being highly important. In addition, physical therapy students have moderate perception about the knowledge regarding moral values, bioethical principles and behavioral rules. More than 90% of students have least knowledge regarding the methods used to analyze the problems and ethical dilemmas of the profession. Conclusion: Study concluded that professional values and ethics are one of the key pillars for good practice in the physiotherapy profession.

The term “ethics” comes from the Greek word 'ethos/ethikos', which means 'tradition, custom or habit". On the other hand, the science that addresses the requirements/duty to act ethically is called Deontology. In exercising the legal profession, Deontology is found as a discipline incorporating a set of principles and rules which must be acknowledged and adhered to by an exercising lawyer in his/her profession. The conduct of lawyers must be exemplary both in exercising profession and outside, in accordance with the dignity inherent to the profession. In recognizing principles and rules of the Code of Professional Conduct and deontology, lawyers must also adhere in their own professional conduct. In exercising their functions, all lawyers are under oath and must live to the commitment of strict adherence and full willingness to an Ethical Code of the profession. The Code of ethics determines the rules of behaviour, which must be adhered to by all lawyers in exercising their profession and rendering their services, to maintain and uphold the dignity and reputation of the Bar Profession. Failure to know the code of ethics does not justify any breach that a lawyer may commit. The idea of addressing this topic stems from the fact that often, lawyers as legal professionals come to confront with their Code of Professional Ethics. Therefore, considering the role and relevance of ethics in the bar profession, in this paper, I have elaborated on the legal grounds of KCA foundation, the regional coverage of the KCA, with a special emphasis on the professional legal ethics and the disciplinary system established by the Chamber of Advocates of Kosovo, a constitutionally established institution, disciplinary proceedings and measures imposed on the lawyers in case of breaches of their own Professional Ethics, concluding with basic principles of conduct and service provision by lawyers.

Physical therapists in all practice settings—clinical, educational, and research—are bound by legal and ethical professional standards governing practice. In recent times, the substance of these formerly distinct obligations have become blended into increasingly unitary standards of professional conduct. Courts now examine health care professional codes of ethics as secondary sources of legal obligation, licensure statutes and regulations derive from professional codes of ethics, and professional association ethics codes encompass legal concepts, including patient abandonment, informed consent, and confidentiality, among others. Physical therapists must simultaneously conform official conduct to legal as well as ethical standards to avoid sanctions on the privilege to practice in a variety of disciplinary forums.

The first part of this chapter briefly examines SDGs education research suggesting that – even though a wide range of initiatives in the field of responsible management education have been put in place – the level of integration of responsibility and sustainability into professional and managerial education/HE is still insufficient. This is reinforced by research into professional ethics which suggests that recent graduates do not effectively identify with the ethical values of organisational or professional ethics, and thus have little commitment to such values in practice. This leads to a focus on the key modes of responsibility, and the three practices which undergird the development of responsibility: deliberation, narrative development, and dialogue. The second part sets out the principles behind an integrated approach to ethics teaching in HE, which focuses on the practice of responsibility, accountability and creative responsibility, as key to learning in general and to ethical development in particular. This is embodied in pedagogy for critical moral consciousness focused in: critical reflection; holistic decision making; dialogue (engaging complexity and difference); mutual accountability; and the exercise of the moral imagination. These stresses both the development of ethical autonomy and positive engagement with plural community (be those professions, institutions, such as universities, or intermediate organisations such as religions) but also the nature of learning. This also from the basis for leadership at all levels of the organisation and beyond. The third and largest part of the chapter will set how ethical identity can be developed in the curriculum, involving a fourfold strategy and related examples of teaching:-Establishing with the parent university key curriculum outcomes focused on responsibility and key ethical virtues. This will detail how virtues such as courage relate to intellectual and psychological virtues, and thus to employability; -Developing ethical teaching based in identity, with modules or parts of modules over three years focused in student identity, professional identity, global identity, and how these relate to personal identity; -Developing pedagogy which focuses on the practice of mutual dialogue and decision making. The pedagogic examples will include student dialogue with university administrators, different professions, and community stakeholders;-Developing integration with the other modules in the curriculum, e.g. through focus across modules on the same professional decision making frameworks, and skills of reflective practice. The examples given will focus on a holistic view of professional practice and ethics through reflection on identity and practice, offering an account of how ethical behaviour can be motivated in the learning environment, and link directly to the SDGs.

Teacher professional ethics is the moral code, moral concept and code of conduct that education workers must observe in their education careers. Teachers working on adult on-job training should have more professional ethics than other teachers, such as, the universal ethics, the pragmatic sense of responsibility, the flexible adaptability, posture the affinity of equality and close to the practical action. In view of the professional ethics of Chinese adult in-service training teachers in recent years, there are professional ethics, utilitarianism tendencies, job burnout and other issues. This article promotes that we should combine education and self-study to strengthen professional ethics training; pubic opinion guides and assessments at the same time, improve professional ethics institutional construction; follow the adult training rules for on-job training, give full play to the professional guidance fuction of professional ethics, etc. Strengthen the construction of adult job training teacher professional ethics.

Four years ago, as colleagues in our university's law and medical schools, we designed and began offering a course for law, medical, and nursing students, studying professionalism and professional ethics by reading and discussing current and earlier images of nurses, doctors, and lawyers in literature. We wanted to make professional ethics, professional culture, and professional education the objects of study rather than simply the unreflective consequences of exposure to professional language, culture, and training. We wanted to do it in an interdisciplinary course where aspiring professionals could share their self-conceptions and their conceptions of each other, and we wanted to do it by using stories, our primary means for organizing experience and claiming meaning for it. This article tells the story of that experience: why we did it; how we did it; what we learned from doing it.

Four years ago, as colleagues in our university's law and medical schools, we designed and began offering a course for law, medical, and nursing students, studying professionalism and professional ethics by reading and discussing current and earlier images of nurses, doctors, and lawyers in literature. We wanted to make professional ethics, professional culture, and professional education the objects of study rather than simply the unreflective consequences of exposure to professional language, culture, and training. We wanted to do it in an interdisciplinary course where aspiring professionals could share their self-conceptions and their conceptions of each other, and we wanted to do it by using stories, our primary means for organizing experience and claiming meaning for it. This article tells the story of that experience: why we did it; how we did it; what we learned from doing it.

The purpose of this study is to determine the extent to which professional ethics, which is a criterion of professionalism, is realized for public sector lawyers and corporate lawyers (including lawyers working in law offices) and for self-employed lawyers, and to compare and evaluate the findings. This study examined how the problem of professional ethics in the practice of law is handled according to the professional status of lawyers (self-employed, public and corporate), and it aims to contribute to the literature by focusing on both the perceptions and expectations of the two groups regarding professional ethics. The findings obtained from the research were evaluated by considering the Attorneys’ Act, the Code of Professional Conduct, and professional practices. It was observed that there is a significant difference between perceptions and expectations of all lawyers participating in the research, without a distinction between public sector and corporate or self-employed, regarding compliance with professional ethics. When the professional ethics perceptions of self-employed lawyers and of public sector and corporate lawyers are compared, no significant difference is found. However, in terms of professional ethical expectations, it is observed that there are significant differences between the two groups regarding some ethical dimensions. 

The scientific article is devoted to guarantees of compliance with professional ethics by judges, prosecutors and lawyers. The purpose of the article is the scientific development of the problems of guarantees of compliance with the professional ethics of the judge, prosecutor and lawyer by defining the concept of guarantees of compliance with professional ethics, defining the main varieties of these guarantees, as well as providing their general characteristics. The scientific article formulates the concept of guarantees of compliance with professional ethics as special legal means aimed at ensuring compliance of professional activity and out-of-service behavior of representatives of relevant legal professions with ethical requirements, prevention of violations of professional ethics and elimination of their negative consequences. The main types of guarantees of compliance with professional ethics by judges, prosecutors and lawyers, namely: ethical selection; making an oath; development and approval of codes of ethics; study of ethics; activities of the relevant authorized bodies; responsibility for ethics violations. It is concluded that these guarantees are typical for representatives of various legal professions, due to the unified legal nature of the rules of professional ethics for lawyers. In view of this, the further development of such guarantees is seen in their unification and improvement of the regulatory regulation of the professional ethics of judges, prosecutors and lawyers, as well as the practice of its application. It is proved that these guarantees constitute an orderly system, that in unity and interconnection allows to establish certain ethical rules and norms, to bring them to the attention of interested persons, to determine the state of their observance and to ensure the most complete implementation in professional activity. Based on the analysis of the current legislation of Ukraine on the judiciary and the status of judges, the prosecutor’s office and the bar examined in detail the content of each of these guarantees. Their influence on the observance of professional ethics of judges, prosecutors and lawyers is determined.

Common morality and ethical theory are universal. Not only do they provide the standards of conduct that we expect all rational persons to follow, but also they provide the basis for professional ethics, the special rules of conduct adhered to by those engaged in pursuits ordinarily called professions, such as law, medicine, engineering, and science. Although common morality and ethical theory are general, professional ethics is specific. Legal ethics applies only to lawyers (and no one else); scientific ethics applies only to scientists. Professional ethics is consistent with common morality, but goes beyond it. Professional ethics governs the interactions among professionals, and between professionals and society (Callahan 1988). In many cases, it requires a higher standard of conduct than is expected of those outside the profession, but the norms of professional ethics must be consistent with common morality. To understand professional ethics, it is necessary to understand the concept of a profession (Davis 1998). A profession is more than a group of people engaged in a common occupation for which they are paid. While there are a variety of ways to define a profession, I use a social contract approach, which I have found to be most useful in my thinking about professional ethics. In this view, a profession derives from two bargains or contracts: one internal and one external. The internal bargain governs the interactions among members of the profession while the external bargain defines the relationship of the profession to society. Both, however, are based on a moral ideal of service around which the profession is organized (Davis 1987). For lawyers, the ideal is justice under law. For physicians, the ideal is curing the sick, protecting patients from disease, and easing the pain of the dying. As Michael Davis has argued, these moral ideals go beyond the demands of ordinary morality, the requirements of law, and the pressures of the market. Using a moral ideal as the fundamental basis of the profession comes from the old- fashioned idea of a profession as a calling.

The article outlines the concepts "nurse", "professional ethics of nurses." The professional ethics of nurses has been defined as a component of medical ethics which studies moral consciousness, moral and ethical aspects of professional activity, moral principles and values that regulate the moral relationship between s nurse and s patient, the patient's family, other members of the medical community and community. The analysis of foreign and Ukrainian experience of formation of nurses’ professional ethics gives grounds to characterize the quality as a set of interrelated cognitive, praxeological, communicative components; their presence allows to interact productively with the professional and social environment on the basis of professionally important ethical knowledge, skills, professional important qualities that are aimed at the effective organization of the medical-preventive process and the solution of professional tasks. The content of the professional ethics of a future nurse consists of ethical categories and professionally important ethical qualities such as: professional duty, responsibility, dignity, conscience, honor, respect, mercy, empathy, tolerance.The peculiarities of educational programs of future licensed younger nurses training (LPN) in the United States aimed at the formation of professional ethics have been outlined. A review of the linguistic- cultural aspect of the formation of nurses’ professional ethics at American higher education institutions has been conducted. The experience of classes on "Nursing Ethics", "Foreign Language" at Cherkasy Medical Academy has been presented; they are aimed at understanding the world of the profession, the culture of communication in medical community, ethical behavior, moral relations, prevention of conflict situations, and provision of psychological support.

Professional ethics are moral principles and standards that regulate the behavior and actions of professionals in carrying out their duties and responsibilities. In this article, ethics is very necessary for choosing ethical decision making because the accounting profession also has a very crucial and in-depth understanding of how ethics in ethical decision making is for an auditor. The aim of this research is to clarify the relationship between professional ethics and auditor ethical decision making. iThis research uses the iSLR method (System iLiterature iReview) and this research can help in balancing the level of significant relationships between professional ethics when making decisions, i.e. auditors and anticipating actions that are inconsistent with business etiquette and when making decisions. idecision. This research was carried out on a sample of 30 articles. The variables used in this research are professional ethics and auditor ethical decisions. iThe research results show that the application of professional ethics has a significant positive influence on auditors' ethical decisions. iThis research was participated in by three students of the iFaculty of iEconomics and iAccounting of iMuhammadiyah University iBekulu. The results of this research show that professional ethics variables independently and simultaneously have a positive and significant influence on auditors' ethical decision making. Keywords: iProfessional iethics, iEthical idecisions, iAuditor

Introduction: Morality is very important in human life because human humanity is formed when moral values are crystallized in him. Every human being is evaluated to the extent of the emergence of moral values in thoughts, speech, and behavior, the first manifestation of a person in society is that person's morality. To increase the impact of professional ethics, it is necessary to have patterns that are consistent with culture and society, and by recognizing them, the dimensions of safe behavior by accountants can be explored. Materials and Methods: This research is based on a combined method. Because in this research, both quantitative and qualitative approaches have been used in data collection and analysis, a combination of findings and conclusions. In the present study, data collection has been done through library and field research methods. Statistics consists of theoretical texts related to accounting professional ethics. In this study, using a researcher-made questionnaire, effective criteria based on previous research were identified and finally, 25 sub-components in the form of 5 indicators were identified as the most important factors of professional ethics. In this study, NVIVO software (in the content analysis section) Used. Results: According to experts, the components of professionalism and organization are more important than other criteria and affect the sustainable development of safe behavior and professional ethics of the accountant. Conclusion: By understanding the professional ethics of accountants and identifying its basic components in different dimensions and determining the importance of each of them, a specific framework or format for accountants to observe or not to observe professional ethics and the desire to act based on Design and implement a code of professional conduct to reduce unsafe behaviors and, as a result, reduce the incidence of accidents in the country's industries.

In today's economy, the subject of taxation, in particular, precise calculation and evaluation of taxes is becoming more and more relevant. There is a practice, where tax auditors performing audits of the business entity often do not even know whether it is ethical to allow the business entity, i.e. taxpayer, to correct some of the errors appearing in the tax records, and not to punish the business by fines and interests, as is prescribed by the Law of Tax Administration of the Republic of Lithuania. It should be noted that there was a similar problem several decades ago among accountants and this led to the emergence of professional codes of ethics of accountants. The discussions of the behaviour of the tax auditor, auditing one or another company, in the context of professional ethics, what fundamental values and principles should he be guided by in order to maintain good quality of work, following the relevant moral norms, enables the argument that the topic of tax auditor's assessment in the context of professional ethics has not been analysed thoroughly enough, therefore the identification of tax auditor's ethical norms, values, principles and, most importantly, assessment is extremely important for the purpose of making the individual tax auditor’s , as well as all the tax system’s performance more efficient. Even for a very knowledgeable in his field tax auditor it is no easy to tell what kind of personal traits suggest that certain behaviour is ethical, consequently the article analyses the main values and principles of professional ethics, that should serve as guidelines not only for tax auditors, but also for any other person, seeking higher results in his profession. Therefore the objective of the research is to conduct a research on tax auditors’ professional ethics.
 The code of ethics plays a special role in the evaluation of professional ethics; it defines the core values and principles for ethical behaviour. A tax auditor, seeking professional growth through quality performance, taking into account the moral obligations, should not only comply with the fundamental values, such as honesty, objectivity, impartiality, confidentiality and sense of duty, but also provide a decent example for the audited company’s employees to demonstrate the integrity of the entire tax system and thus create confidence in the Lithuanian tax system. The results of a questionnaire survey showed that the tax auditor's professional ethics are directly connected with the taxpayer's trust in the Lithuanian tax system. Therefore, the existing practice of different taxpayers committing identical offences and being treated differently undermines the confidence not only in tax auditors and their professional ethics, but also in the tax system of the country as a whole. The questionnaire survey results suggest that, according to the taxpayers, it is essential for the tax auditor to follow such principles at work as impartiality, confidentiality and thoroughness. All of the above should be included in the tax auditor's code of ethics.