Professional Values and Ethics

Jock Willams

Dante Mackell

Curtis Phillips

Professional Values and Ethics

Defining the meaning and the difference of the words values and ethics will help give a clearer understanding of the words. These words values and ethics are commonly misunderstood and confused with each other. Ethics and values come into effect during normal everyday lives. A person’s values and ethics may act as a code of conduct or blueprint when it comes to general characteristics or any type of decisions that need to be made.

Values are the belief in something meaningful that oneself finds important or consider valuable. Values can sometimes be mixed with attitude, but attitudes reflect ones behavior and action, and values reflect more of the mental belief. There are many types of values such as personal, professional, core, family, etc. Personal values are beliefs and standards that a person lives by such as faith, honesty, integrity, etc. Professional values are the operational standards that guide a company’s employee business practices such as accountability, cooperation, discipline, etc. For example: a company may have certain personal values in their by laws, stating what is expected of an employee that will continue to make their company move forward.

Colin Powell provided some key leadership examples from his book the Leadership Secrets of Colin Powell. Colin Powell takes his position on values and ethics from the Seven ARMY Core Values: Loyalty, Duty Respect, Selfless Service, Honor, Integrity, and Personal Courage. Powell surmises in his book” being responsible sometimes means pissing people off” (O. Harari, The leadership secrets of Colin Powell, 2003).

Ethics can quickly be defined as morals. Ethics come into place when determining the difference between what is acceptable or unacceptable. Ethics are normally instilled inside of someone as early as childhood, starting in the home, school, church, etc. Another possible definition of ethics is a method for deciding...