Implementing Ethics in the Professions: Toward Ecological Integrity

ABSTRACT

Ethics guidelines for professionals in the risk sciences are relatively recent. The need for accountability is recognized by many professionals, and has led to the development of ethics guidelines, anchored in organization-specific mission statements or sets of core values. Almost none of the professions’ existing codes reflect on broader social consequences such as concern for ecological integrity. The importance of this consideration was recently noted in The Toronto Resolution where ensuring ecological integrity was directly linked to professional conduct. Guidelines are useful and necessary for professional development and day-to-day functioning, but alone they are insufficient to ensure that professionals learn about ethics and how to apply the guidelines while simultaneously recognizing the broader social consequences of their professional pursuits. In the interests both of professional accountability, as well as concern for the seamless web upon which all life-support systems depend, each profession needs an ethics infrastructure. This paper provides a comprehensive organizational infrastructure, comprising a seven-step program—focusing more on process than on content—for the integration of ethics into professional life. A framework for action is developed, integrating several operationalizable process steps. Difficulties in raising professional awareness and introducing an ethics infrastructure are discussed in the context of epidemiology. Professional organization and consensus on core values are seen as laying the foundation for an ethics program. To implement a program, codifying professional conduct in the form of ethics guidelines, establishing consistent procedures and review processes, and establishing ethics education and training, are essential. Furthermore, introducing incentives to encourage ethical conduct, an ethics consultation service, and ongoing oversight and commitment, are critical components for success. Its process goals would include ongoing review, education, dissemination, and adherence to the professions’ core values, into which concern for issues beyond the narrow confines of professional pursuits would be integrated.