Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

How professional ethics work

siderea.dreamwidth.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

11–20 of 56 posts

Re: How professional ethics work

#11

Post by hackyhacky »

frankenbagel wrote: post #10
k__ wrote: post #2

That explanation makes quite the leap from "personal ethics are an opinion" to "professional ethics are facts". Everything that comes after that seems just to explain why professional ethics are crucial, but I'm still missing where the opinions of a bunch of people suddenly become a fact.

They explain that: because professional ethics are enforced . If some licensing panel finds you violated the documented ethics, your career in that field can be over… for life.

Minor detail, but the author is female.

Re: How professional ethics work

#12

Post by hackyhacky »

ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #6
hackyhacky wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did you read the whole article? The author explains that professional licensure is for prohibiting negative behavior, not for advocating standards or best-practices.

> Did you read the whole article? Isn't there something in the Ts and Cs about that kind of question? I know. My comment was about that line (and the "libertarian" comment). Note my comment about managers.

You're right, I violated the standards and practices.

I saw your comment about the managers, but it rather misses the point. The idea of professional ethics is that the practitioners need licensure so that they can refuse to perform unethical work demanded by their manager. If programming managers had a professional code of ethics, it wouldn't impact the ability of individual programmers from doing unethical things.

Re: How professional ethics work

#13

Post by frankenbagel »

hackyhacky wrote: post #11
frankenbagel wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They explain that: because professional ethics are enforced . If some licensing panel finds you violated the documented ethics, your career in that field can be over… for life.

Minor detail, but the author is female.

Thank you, my bad, moved to gender neutral “they”.

Re: How professional ethics work

#14

Post by efficulty »

hackyhacky wrote: post #7
k__ wrote: post #2

That explanation makes quite the leap from "personal ethics are an opinion" to "professional ethics are facts". Everything that comes after that seems just to explain why professional ethics are crucial, but I'm still missing where the opinions of a bunch of people suddenly become a fact.

Professional ethics are facts in the sense that they are codified by an organization, not in the sense that they are objective and immutable. The author's running example is that of psychotherapy licensing, but the same applies to any medical license, law license, teachers, coroners, etc. The ethics of your profession are standardized across all practitioners, which means that it's hard for an unethical employer to f…

I am surprised at the narrow view the author of the article takes. They are using one particular meaning for the word professional ethics. In my country it's a much broader term, definitely not law or anything close to it, often not even a standard. It can be informal or formal, it does exist (and is treated seriously) in some unlicensed trades.

For every licensed profession out there, there's got to be 10s or 100s more that are unlicensed. But the unlicensed professions still can have professional ethics, somethings with formal documents, education, etc. What do you think happens on conferences, in the private conversations, in schools and training and in apprenticeship or mentoring? These are very strong carriers of not just skill and knowledge, but also gossip (big part of learning and deciding ethics!) and moral consideration and responsibility . That doesn't mean they are less useful, but it does mean they are not "law" or official or binding in the way the author suggests.

Maybe it's cultural? I'm from central Europe and the author seems to be American, and the words they are using give me a hint of high pride, high ego, arrogance. Feels a bit like militaristic zeal.

Coming back tothe topic, where I worked, some professions do have ethics boards and people are licensed, while in other professions there are informal groups who recommend certain practices and are treated seriously by some (but definitely not all) professionals.

From what I heard from a few experienced lawyers and managment coaches (as an example of polar opposites in terms of being licensed), the only bad actors who are ever punished for their unethical behavior are fools and criminals, and even that is not as frequent as you'd think.

I suspect 95+% of the morality of a person' bad behavior is invisible to any observers (by design), definitely never gets checked in any structured fashion by anyone (boring, thankless work, gets you in trouble, no material gain, low chance of success), and there's almost always a way to behave badly and justify it or have deniability. The real judges are outside observers, and those care mostly about serious criminal behavior, everything else is called "it's business" or some such general explanation.

Re: How professional ethics work

#15

Post by hackyhacky »

efficulty wrote: post #14
hackyhacky wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Professional ethics are facts in the sense that they are codified by an organization, not in the sense that they are objective and immutable. The author's running example is that of psychotherapy licensing, but the same applies to any medical license, law license, teachers, coroners, etc. The ethics of your profession are standardized across all practitioners, which means that it's hard for an unethical employer to f…

I am surprised at the narrow view the author of the article takes. They are using one particular meaning for the word professional ethics. In my country it's a much broader term, definitely not law or anything close to it, often not even a standard. It can be informal or formal, it does exist (and is treated seriously) in some unlicensed trades. For every licensed profession out there, there's got to be 10s or 100s m…

> the words they are using give me a hint of high pride, high ego, arrogance. Feels a bit like militaristic zeal.

Really? I didn't get that sense at all. Can you give an example?

Re: How professional ethics work

#16

Post by dan-robertson »

k__ wrote: post #2

That explanation makes quite the leap from "personal ethics are an opinion" to "professional ethics are facts". Everything that comes after that seems just to explain why professional ethics are crucial, but I'm still missing where the opinions of a bunch of people suddenly become a fact.

Perhaps you would prefer an analogy to law where there are things which are illegal and they may not precisely correspond to the things which you personally consider unethical?

Re: How professional ethics work

#17

Post by k__ »

dan-robertson wrote: post #16
k__ wrote: post #2

That explanation makes quite the leap from "personal ethics are an opinion" to "professional ethics are facts". Everything that comes after that seems just to explain why professional ethics are crucial, but I'm still missing where the opinions of a bunch of people suddenly become a fact.

Perhaps you would prefer an analogy to law where there are things which are illegal and they may not precisely correspond to the things which you personally consider unethical?

I mean, I understand that laws and professional ethics are enforced. But that doesn't make any of them anything other than opinions.

Re: How professional ethics work

#18

Post by k__ »

frankenbagel wrote: post #10
k__ wrote: post #2

That explanation makes quite the leap from "personal ethics are an opinion" to "professional ethics are facts". Everything that comes after that seems just to explain why professional ethics are crucial, but I'm still missing where the opinions of a bunch of people suddenly become a fact.

They explain that: because professional ethics are enforced . If some licensing panel finds you violated the documented ethics, your career in that field can be over… for life.

I find that's a bit too handwavy.

Why would you redefine something as fundamental as a fact, that's quite different from an opinion, as "the opinion that a group enforces"?

The repercussions if you violate those opinions might have factual consequences for you, but that makes the basis for all this not more factual.

Re: How professional ethics work

#19

Post by efficulty »

hackyhacky wrote: post #15
efficulty wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am surprised at the narrow view the author of the article takes. They are using one particular meaning for the word professional ethics. In my country it's a much broader term, definitely not law or anything close to it, often not even a standard. It can be informal or formal, it does exist (and is treated seriously) in some unlicensed trades. For every licensed profession out there, there's got to be 10s or 100s m…

> the words they are using give me a hint of high pride, high ego, arrogance. Feels a bit like militaristic zeal. Really? I didn't get that sense at all. Can you give an example?

Sure.

"You are told what the ethics of your profession are. Indeed, they are part of terms of participating in that profession, more on which below." -- wrong and somewhat patronizing. There exist professions which do have (recognized) ethics, but those ethics are optional, definitely not part of becoming a professional (because the field is informal and without licenses and too young to have that), and participation in profession has nothing to do with moral awareness or stance.

"They are a set of ethics that is universal to a population of professionals. They are not an opinion an individual has, they are facts –" -- this is an extreme position, said with high conviction that it's the only one.

"Professional ethics are codified, and because they are codified, they can be enforced. Indeed, professional ethics are codified so that they can be enforced." - this person likes to put a lof ot tough words in bold. Again, this is so myopic I don't even know what to say. So many of the ethical consideration in some professions goes way beyond enforcable issues, or even hints of admonition. A psychoterapist especially should know better. This is where i detect an ego-driven agenda.

"People who program for a living trend hard to the libertarian and want not to be subject to the government." - that's a strong political bias right there,and definitely on the militaristic end. You will do what (y)our country tells you or else! That's high ego, and arrogance, at once. And in the next sentence...

"People who program for a living trend hard to the libertarian and want not to be subject to the government. That's fine. But then you can't have professional ethics." - oh my lord, will you stop :) How many more times will this person highlight that THEY KNOW BETTER and the reader DOES NOT and SHOULD BETTER START CHANGING THEIR MIND :)

Re: How professional ethics work

#20

Post by Arrath »

hackyhacky wrote: post #5
ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #3

> I am well aware that the idea of there being professional licensing of software developers is wildly unpopular among programmers. That's an issue. LeetCode tests are often formed to bias towards styles and solutions favored by the testers. For example, a company may want all their engineers to have a particular approach to recursion, so they test for that approach. The issue with professional testing, is that it ca…

Did you read the whole article? The author explains that professional licensure is for prohibiting negative behavior, not for advocating standards or best-practices.

> The author explains that professional licensure is for prohibiting negative behavior, not for advocating standards or best-practices.

Or for artificially limiting new entries into the profession through testing quotas, training program costs/length requirements and so on

Post reply on HN