ABSTRACT

In this chapter, the authors focus on professional ethics rather than the comparative merits of substantive policies, which is the subject of the remainder. A reasonable approach to professional ethics for policy analysts, therefore, may be to recognize responsibility to the client and analytical integrity as values that belong in the general hierarchy of values governing moral behavior. They also focus on values inherent in policy outcomes rather than on values, like analytical integrity and responsibility to the client, associated with the actual conduct of analysis. Analysts can exercise various combinations of voice, exit, and disloyalty when they confront value conflicts. The logical possibilities are presented in where voice, exit, and disloyalty are represented by circles. Actions involving more than one of the dimensions are represented by intersections of circles. Therefore, the analyst's ethical burden seems to go beyond refusal to participate actively in the misrepresentation of the analysis.