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 force you to do unethical things, since the threat of license removal is a stronger threat than that of simply being fired; and also since the hypothetical unethical employer will have a hard time finding another licensed practitioner who would undertake the same task.

I really enjoyed the article, I recommend reading the whole thing.

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.

> 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 :)

The whole point of the article is that enforced profession ethics are a leverage tool. If you don't have enforcement, you don't have that leverage. It's not pretentious, it's simply factual.

If you say "It violates my professional ethics to program the drivers for an orphan blender", your boss can fire you and replace you with some other developer with no such scruples. If a professional engineer says "It violates my (enforced) professional ethics to sign off on the blade design of this orphan blender, and anybody who did would lose their licensing", then their boss could fire them, but they're not going to get their blade signed off.

> Maybe it's cultural? I'm from central Europe and the author seems to be American

It’s not cultural, it’s a question of enforcement. The author describes professional licenses that are enforced by a board. You describe a “license” that isn’t enforced. If your legal system doesn’t enforce licenses, that’s not a cultural difference it’s a legal one.

> unlicensed professions can still have professional ethics

This is like saying you can have laws without police to enforce them. If the consequence for violating the ethical norm does not jeopardize one’s license (because there isn’t one) then you don’t have a norm, you have a suggestion.

I'd guess there's a kind of authoritarian body of thought taking shape as groups look to use professional licensure as another culture war wedge. So there are going to be articles like this "explaining" "how professional ethics work" to tell us how we are supposed to think about it.

The article doesn't explain how you're supposed to think about, just its mechanics and intentions. I'd say the approach to professional ethics described in the article has been pretty successful in the medical and legal world, maybe it could be expanded to other areas. I do not understand your invocation of the "culture war" shibboleth.

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.

For personal ethics, they are mere opinion as you get to choose what those ethics are. For professional ethics, those ethics are the opinions of the relevant professional associations and regulatory bodies.

They are facts in the sense that "The Bar believes that it is unethical to lie to the court" is a fact. It is simply factually true that the legal profession holds that ethical belief.

And thus the point, anyone who seeks to join such a profession has to accept their ethics "as if" they were facts. You can't choose other professional ethics in the sense that you can choose to hold a different opinion.

Minor detail, but the author is female.

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

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.

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

Sure, in the same sense that any law is an opinion of the body that defined it, e.g. "It is the opinion of the legislature that a person who commits the unlawful killing of a human being with malice aforethought shall be guilty of murder."

It's an opinion, but it's an opinion with real-world consequences... just like professional ethics, according to the atricle.

* * *