ABSTRACT
This chapter indicates how and why virtue ethics may be considered especially suited to understand. It addresses some of the ethical challenges facing contemporary professional practices. The chapter draws on a broadly Aristotelian understanding of phronesis or practical wisdom to explore the complex nature of professional deliberation and judgement. It shows how cultivation and employment of the form of practical reasoning is only possible in an organisational and institutional setting conducive to providing professional practitioners with scope and opportunities to consider a diverse range of professionally significant aims, issues and available courses of action. The chapter explores the implications of organisational constraints for the cultivation and exercise of professional phronesis. It also shows what may happen if such opportunities are unduly restricted. The chapter reviews that virtue ethics offers a useful perspective on professional ethics. The relationship between professional ethics and the 'personal' ethics, of the ordinary everyday moral relationships, dealings and responsibilities is evidently complex.
