Transcript
Page 1: Getting Started: Helping a New Profession Develop an Ethics Program

Getting Started: Helping a New Profession Developan Ethics Program

Michael Davis • Matthew W. Keefer

Received: 17 March 2011 / Accepted: 20 April 2011 / Published online: 11 August 2011

� Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2011

Abstract Both of us have been involved with helping professions, especially new

scientific or technological professions, develop ethics programs—for undergradu-

ates, graduates, and practitioners. By ‘‘ethics program’’, we mean any strategy for

teaching ethics, including developing materials. Our purpose here is to generalize

from that experience to identify the chief elements needed to get an ethics program

started in a new profession. We are focusing on new professions for two reasons.

First, all the older professions, both in the US and in most other countries, now have

ethics programs of some sort. They do not need our advice to get started. Second,

new professions face special problems just because they are new—everything from

deciding who belongs to the profession to formalizing ethical standards so that they

can be taught. Our purpose in this paper is to generalize from our experience and to

identify some of the fundamentals for getting an ethics program started in a new

profession. We present our recommendations in the form of response to 6 questions

anyone designing an ethics program for a new profession should ask. We realize

that our brief discussion does not provide a complete treatment of the subject. Our

purpose has been to point in the right direction those considering an ethics program

for new profession.

Keywords Cases � Codes � Curriculum � Education � Ethics

M. Davis (&)

Humanities Department, Center for the Study of Ethics in the Professions,

Illinois Institute of Technology, Chicago, IL 60616, USA

e-mail: [email protected]

M. Davis

5300 S. South Shore Drive #57, Chicago, IL 60615, USA

M. W. Keefer

Chair of the Division of Educational Psychology, Research and Evaluation, University of Missouri-

St. Louis, St. Louis, MO, USA

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Sci Eng Ethics (2013) 19:259–264

DOI 10.1007/s11948-011-9279-x

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Introduction

Both of us have helped professions, especially new scientific or technical

professions (such as software engineering and geophysical information systems),

develop ethics programs—for undergraduates, graduates, and practitioners. By

‘‘ethics program’’, we mean any strategy for teaching ethics, including drafting

materials. By ‘‘new profession’’, we mean an existing occupation, discipline, or

other group that some of the members of which have begun to think of as a

profession. The professional status of a ‘‘new profession’’ is generally contested

both inside and outside but the contest concerns something relatively specific,

whether the group in question is, or at least should be, voluntarily organized to earn

a living by openly serving a moral ideal in a morally-permissible way beyond what

law, market, morality, and public opinion would otherwise require.1

Our purpose here is to generalize from our experience with new professions to

identify the chief elements needed to get an ethics program started in such a

profession. We are focusing on new professions for two reasons. First, all the older

professions, both in the US and in most other countries, now have ethics programs

of some sort. They do not need our advice to get started (though even they may find

what we say useful for review or appraisal of existing programs). Second, new

professions face special problems just because they are new—everything from

defining who belongs to the profession to formalizing ethical standards so that they

can be taught. This article takes the form of question and answer. The six questions

are intended to be what is on the mind of a professional who consults us (whether or

not the question is ever stated). The corresponding answers are what we would now

say in response.

Question 1 How do I know when a new profession needs an ethics program?

The short answer is that a new profession always needs an ethics program

because professional ethics is always more than ‘‘just common sense’’.

The long answer requires making clear what we mean by ‘‘ethics’’. We do not

mean ordinary morality (Don’t lie, Keep your promises, Help the needy, and so

on)—which is part of common sense. We also do not mean the field of philosophy

that goes by that name (the attempt to understand morality as a rational

undertaking). By ‘‘ethics’’ we mean those special (morally permissible) standards

of conduct that apply to members of a group just because they are members of that

group. A profession’s ethics are standards that apply to members of that profession

just because they are members. Like the profession’s technical standards, of which

they are in fact the most general part, they are an achievement of the profession, part

of what makes a member of the profession something more than a mere individual

expert. They help to standardize the work of the profession.

Like the rest of us, a professional learns morality all through life—from direct

experience, discussion with others, history, fiction, and so on. Professionals need not

learn philosophical ethics at all. But the profession’s ethics must be learned if the

profession is to have ethical standards of its own (a living practice). Those standards

1 For further explanation (and defense) of this definition, see M. Davis (2002).

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can only be learned in a professional school, from appropriate books (when they

exist—as they generally do not in a new profession), or from experience.

Experience is a poor teacher—though its lessons are seldom forgotten. It is a poor

teacher because it gives the test before the lesson, because the cost of each lesson is

high, and because its treatment is never systematic. Schools, including professional

schools, exist to make learning from experience as rare as possible. For most

students, books are a poor substitute for school. We learn skills best from those who

have them and know how to pass them on.2

Question 2 How can I convince the profession of the need for an ethics program?

This question concerns the politics of the profession in question. No two

professions are alike. Our experience is that three considerations seem to be

especially helpful in convincing a profession that it needs an ethics program. The

first is that professions close to the new profession, especially the more established

ones, already have such programs. Such programs are, in effect, standard operating

procedure for any profession. The second is a program to propose. Professions are

much more likely to consider adopting a program if they have a concrete candidate

to consider. If a program is not yet available or not easily constructed, argue that

with innovations and new knowledge come new challenges, including ethical

challenges, which require consideration of new ethical guidelines, new ethical

skills, and therefore, new subject matter in the classroom; then find a funding

agency to support development of the ethics program so defined. Outside support is

a surprisingly effective argument. Third is the existence of at least one recent

scandal concerning the profession in question. Convincing a profession to adopt an

ethics program is, in part, a matter of timing.

Question 3 How do I identify the profession’s chief ethical problems?

There are at least 4 ways to identify the profession’s ethical problems (ways

which can be combined). One is a formal open-ended survey of practitioners.

Another is holding sessions at professional meetings at which practitioners are first

presented with a problem for discussion and then, after a brief discussion, are asked

to suggest problems for further discussion. Third is to look through the professional

literature for problems. Fourth is to adapt problems already developed for an

adjacent field and then ask practitioners whether these adapted problems are

‘‘realistic’’.

Always collect more problems than you think you need. Some will fail to spark

discussion, spark the wrong sort of discussion, spark only a brief discussion, or

otherwise not serve as required. Note that we don’t start by asking professionals a

question like ‘‘What are the most significant ethical problems in your field?’’ We do

not for at least two reasons. First, our experience is that this doesn’t work. Most

professionals simply don’t have or cannot recall a class of problems they would

consider ‘‘ethical’’. What they recall are individual problems. Often they are not

sure whether they are even ‘‘ethical’’; what they are sure of is that they were, in one

way or another, troubling. Second, practitioners rarely have a sense of their

2 For more on this point, see M. Davis (2011).

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profession as a whole. What they are sure of, and therefore, what they are willing to

talk about, are problems that they themselves see or hear about. A question that

invites them to draw on that experience is much more likely to solicit useful

problems than a question that invites them to think more abstractly.

Question 4 How do I identify the ethical principles to resolve those problems?

A good way to identify ethical principles suitable for resolving the ethical

problems of a profession is to look at the profession’s code of ethics, if there is one.

(Anything obvious to the profession is likely to be there.) If there is no code, then

the best way to identify principles is to begin with discussion of ethical problems

that seem typical of the field, especially easy problems. Keep a record of the

discussion. Examine the record for principles cited during the discussion, e.g.,

‘‘Protect the public’’, ‘‘Don’t want to disappoint the customer’’, ‘‘Loyalty’’. Show

the list to other practitioners to see whether they agree that the principles identified

are important. Put aside for further discussion (and amendment or substitution) any

principle to which more than one practitioner objects. The next time, use a

somewhat different collection of cases, one that might lead to citation of principles

not yet cited. As easy problems seem to yield fewer new principles, increase the

proportion of harder problems. Continue until the list of principles seems to have

become stable. That list is, in effect, an explication of the profession’s implicit code

of ethics. It will serve to guide classroom discussion until the profession adopts an

official code.

This is, we think, a good way to develop ethical principles to guide discussion of

problems. There are others (Kipnis 1988; Anderson 1994; Davis 2007). But there

are, we think, also some ways not to proceed. The most common mistake is to ask

practitioners abstract questions, such as ‘‘What obligations do we have to society, to

employers and funders, to colleagues, and to individuals in society?’’ Such abstract

questions tend to generate answers both equally abstract and not particularly suited

to the profession in question. Professionals are better at recognizing special

obligations when thinking about the contexts in which they appear (that is, specific

problems).

Another common mistake is to let some respected member of the field write an

ethics code. The respected member, usually senior in the field, is likely to be too far

from the difficulties of ordinary practice that the code is supposed to help resolve.

The result is typically high sentiments ordinary practitioners regard as unhelpful.

New professions generally have new problems (as well as some they share with

other professions) because they work in new ways, have new knowledge, or enter

into new relations with clients, employers, public, or environment. The new

problems are generally hard to predict; they become evident in practice. The

profession must often learn from experience even if the individual professional does

not. There is, then, a need to begin the search for ethical principles by a process that

stays close to actual practice.

Question 5 How do I create an ethics curriculum and guide instruction?

An ethics curriculum should have at least four objectives: (1) raising student

sensitivity to ethical problems they may face in professional practice; (2) providing

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them with information that may help them resolve those problems (including ethical

standards, history of the profession, and structure of organizations in which the

profession works); (3) improving ethical judgment (that is, increasing the likelihood

that students will develop a good plan of action in response to an ethical problem);

and (4) increasing ethical commitment (that is, increasing the likelihood that a

student will carry out a good plan once developed). The presentation of ethical

materials should be structured with one or more of these objectives in mind.

One common mistake in designing an ethics curriculum is to think that the

objective is to teach students ethical principles as such. The result is a direct

presentation of standards or obligations. The thinking is something like, ‘‘We know

we want them to be aware of their professional obligations, so why not start with

those?’’ There are various instructional strategies and materials that fit this

approach, most of which we would not recommend. Least effective would be simply

asking students to enumerate their professional obligations or to commit to memory

important code provisions. Somewhat more creative would be asking students to

generate the provisions that could apply to selected problems or scenarios. These

approaches are not likely to be successful. Students find such generative tasks both

difficult and boring. But more important, since the principles are not presented

within a context in which they are solving practical problems, there is little chance

that students will know what to do with them when they confront an actual problem.

Question 6 What will I have when I have everything I need?

The details in the answer to this question may vary considerably. But at least two

things are always needed. First, the ethics program should include a set of

interesting problems. These not only provide a good way to introduce students to

issues in the profession (raising sensitivity), but resolving them is the best way we

know to introduce students to important ethical principles, technical standards, and

institutional background (adding to ethical knowledge).

Second, it is useful to have some materials that will help facilitate or guide

discussion of the problems. These can include relevant readings and other

supporting materials, e.g., code provisions, case commentaries, court rulings, and

so on. But our experience suggests that clear guidance is also useful for the

discussion of problems, for example, a decision procedure having several steps.

Research also supports this idea Keefer and Ashley (2001). The purpose of the

guidance is practical, e.g., to help students be more open to alternatives, to

investigate aspects of the problem that might provide the means to a better

resolution, and so on. The form of the support can vary from explicit presentation of

reasoning steps (a decision procedure) to a structured exposure to case commen-

taries that exhibit the exemplary reasoning (though our experience is that the more

explicit one can be about the method, the better).

Conclusion

Our purpose in this article was to generalize from our experience and to identify

some of the fundamentals for getting an ethics program started in a new profession,

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especially a new scientific or technological profession. We presented our

recommendations in the form of response to six questions anyone designing an

ethics program for a new profession should ask. We realize that our brief discussion

does not provide a complete treatment of the subject. Our purpose has been to point

in the right direction those considering an ethics program for new profession.

Acknowledgments A version of this article was presented at the Eighteenth Annual Meeting of the

Association for Practical and Professional Ethics, March 5–8, 2009, Cincinnati, Ohio. We should like to

thank those present, as well as one reviewer for this journal, for comments. This article relies on work

performed under. NSF Grant No. 0019171 NSF Division of Information and Intelligent Systems:

Collaborative Research: The Responsible Conduct of Computational Modeling and Research (Keefer,

Co-PI); and NSF Grant No. SES-9985813: Ethics Across the Curriculum: Continuing to Transfer the

Technology (Davis, PI).

References

Anderson, R. E. (1994). The ACM code of ethics: History, process, and implications. In C. Huff & T.

Finhold (Eds.), Social issues in computing: Putting computing in its place (pp. 48–62). NY:

McGraw-Hill.

Davis, M. (2002). Profession, code, and ethics. Aldershot, England: Ashgage.

Davis, M. (2007). Eighteen rules for writing a code of professional ethics. Science and EngineeringEthics, 13, 171–189.

Davis, M. (2011). A plea for judgment. Science and Engineering Ethics. [Epub ahead of print]. Available

from http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21318325.

Keefer, M. W., & Ashley, K. D. (2001). Case-based approaches to professional ethics: A systematic

comparison of students’ and ethicists’ moral reasoning. The Journal of Moral Education, 30(4),

377–398.

Kipnis, K. (1988). Toward a code of ethics for pre-school teachers: The role of the ethics consultant.

International Journal of Applied Philosophy, 4, 1–10.

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