Personal and Professional Ethics

Question :

Explain the importance of understanding your personal ethical perspective.

Analyze the relationship between personal and professional ethics in psychology.

Answer :

Introduction 

Ethics is something that defines what is right and wrong from the society's point of view. It guides the action and activities, behavior, attitude, and opinion of people towards certain things (Duska et al., 2018). Therefore, it is very important to be aware of the ethical code of conduct so that an individual can adhere to the ethical norms of society. In this paper, the relationship between personal as well as professional ethics in psychology has been analyzed. Apart from this, the discussion has also been made to determine how the APA decision-making process facilitates more ethical professional behavior.

Importance of understanding personal ethical perspective 

It is very important to understand the personal ethical perspective because it allows them to line up what they believe is right to what the organization believes is right. Most importantly, understanding personal ethical perspective increases the likelihood of people to adopt ethical behavior and practices. For example, if a leader understands his or her personal ethical perspective, he or she can effectively adopt ethical leadership. Personal ethical perspective determines the values, morals, and beliefs of people. It is important to understand how individuals form their values, morals, and beliefs (Caldwell et al., 2017). It helps in meeting the standard ethical practices of society and the organization. Ethical behaviors and practices are not only helpful but also necessary. The leader can define the ethical behavior for every member of the organization according to his or her personal ethical perspective. It would help in solving the issues easily as with the help of it the root cause of the problem can be identified. Apart from this, understanding a personal ethical perspective also guides the leader to conduct self-evaluation in order to identify whether the leader has the required skills and competencies or not. It is critical to understand the personal ethical perspective because the leader will consciously work to develop as well as use ethics that makes the leader effective. It will also improve the ethical decision-making as well as the ability to put theory into practice so that the overall organizational efficiency and effectiveness can improve. The behavior of every member of the organization can be guided and hence the leader can create an ethical organization (Lilja & Osbeck, 2019). Thus, it can be said that understanding a personal ethical perspective is essential.

The relationship between personal and professional ethics in psychology 

In order to understand the relationship between personal and professional ethics in psychology, it is important to understand the personal and professional ethics. Personal ethics can be defined as the ethics that an individual identifies with in respect to people as well as the situation that the individual deals with in daily life (Belinova et al., 2017). On the other hand, professional ethics can be defined as the ethics that an individual must adhere to in respect of his or her interactions and business dealings in his or her professional life. 

It is important to understand that in some cases, the personal, as well as professional ethics, may clash and hence create a moral conflict. Therefore, it is important to manage personal and professional ethics significantly in order to avoid moral conflict. There is a significant difference between personal and professional ethics. Due to this, it is very tough to handle a situation in the business setting and personal life. Every individual forms a set of ethical behavior, values, beliefs, and morals and when they enter the organization, they do not leave their values as well as experience at door but carry to office or organization as well. Personal ethics sometimes helps in adopting professional ethics as well (Maranzan et al., 2018). An individual with a set of values, morals, and beliefs can easily understand organizational ethics, morals, values, and belief and hence they can adhere to professional ethics.

Personal ethics come from hearts and souls whereas professional ethics tend to develop with practical outcomes. It makes sense for an organization to post a code of ethics and use the code of ethics to guide the behavior of every employee of the organization. The personal ethics of people develop based on the culture, religion, as well as background of people that have a significant impact on their lives whereas professional ethics is based significantly on the principles or requirements of the profession and position within the organization. In the case of professional ethics, an individual may have to legally obey some ethical principles such as confidentiality but it is not so with personal ethics.

Conclusion 

There is a very significant impact on the personal and professional life of people. Personal ethics can be significantly influenced by culture, family, environment, as well as the experience of people whereas professional ethics is determined by the organization. Ethics provides guidelines for every individual to follow a set of practices that are socially acceptable.

References

BELINOVA, N. V., BICHEVA, I. B., KOLESOVA, O. V., KHANOVA, T. G., & KHIZHNAYA, A. V. (2017). Features of professional ethics formation of the future teacher. Revista Espacio, 38(25).

Caldwell, C., Ichiho, R., & Anderson, V. (2017). Understanding level 5 leaders: the ethical perspectives of leadership humility. Journal of Management Development.

Childress-Beatty, L., & Haynes, J. P. (2020). A visionary and transformational APA Ethics Code: comment on O’Donohue (2019). Ethics & Behavior, 30(4), 294-298.

Duska, R. F., Duska, B. S., & Kury, K. W. (2018). Accounting ethics. John Wiley & Sons.

Lilja, A., & Osbeck, C. (2019). Understanding, acting, verbalizing, and persevering–Swedish teachers' perspectives on important ethical competences for students. Journal of Moral Education, 1-17.

Maranzan, K. A., Kowatch, K. R., Mascioli, B. A., McGeown, L., Popowich, A. D., & Spiroiu, F. (2018). Self-care and the Canadian Code of Ethics: Implications for training in professional psychology. Canadian Psychology/Psychologie Canadienne, 59(4), 361.

McCutcheon, J. L. (2017). Emerging ethical issues in police and public safety psychology: Reflections on mandatory vs. aspirational ethics. Police psychology and its growing impact on modern law enforcement (pp. 314-334). IGI Global.