ABSTRACT
This chapter explores various approaches to professional ethics, particularly highlighting the philosophical debates that underpin most of these debates. Ethics have long been seen as a central plank in establishing professional legitimacy, as a defining element is the responsibility of the professional to society at large, as well as to the particular client. The urmythos from which all of the myths in the professional mythology spring is that professions are oriented to the service of humanity. The wider reading of philosophy introduced the established schools of consequentialism and deontology, as developed by Bentham and Kant which have since dominated the development of professional ethics. The critical scholar Brecher sees codes as encapsulating the very worst of professionalism and empty claims to ethics: of course the transformation of a body of workers into a profession requires the creation of an appropriate code of professional ethics. There is an absence of engagement with the deeper struggle that comprises genuine professional ethical responsibility.
