How does the code of Ethical Practice affect your role at work?

This is easy to understand once you know what ethical practice is. It is honoring the morals, values and beliefs of your profession, and helping other people to make decisions based on unbiased information. It also means conforming to standards that are accepted by the majority and which are consistent.

Different professions have different ethical practices and so they will affect your role at work in different ways, but it is accepted that they are all based on moral integrity even though in some instances the ethics that are necessary are not as complex as in others.

• Simple ethical practices

Some professions have ethical practices that are little more than social standards of behavior. For example, if you were to work in the retail industry, it is considered to be both ethical and essential that you are honest and that you treat both colleagues and customers with respect.

• More complex practices

The medical profession is filled with complex ethical issues that will affect the role of anybody who has a career in this field. These ethical practices include all the socially accepted modes of behavior that affect all us in our dealings with other people, but they also include far more serious issues and have given rise to many debates.

Examples of these are euthanasia and genetic engineering. The first is allowing people who are sick, in pain and with absolutely no chance of recovering to die with dignity and in peace; while the other includes the very many different ways of looking for cures and to improving the lot of many people.

The trouble is that both of these things are highly emotive subjects and so are subject to intense scrutiny in order to ensure that nobody is compromised and so that all concerned have very strict codes of ethical practice to which they must conform.