A Personal Discussion of Professional Ethics

In some settings, just mentioning the phrase “professional ethics” makes the hairs on people’s arms stand up… but it shouldn’t. Part of the unease might stem from the fact that the term is often poorly defined or understood, leaving a nebulous gray area that makes people not only unsure of where they stand, but also where they should be standing. In this episode, Tony reviews a New York Post article on pilots who lied about medical conditions that would have disqualified them from flying and then demystifies the concept of professional ethics by offering some key metrics for standards of conduct in areas such as honesty, integrity, loyalty, and accountability, along with a set of definitions to identify those behaviors that meet or exceed the standard and those that don’t. Nobody’s perfect, but at least with clear definitions we can all shoot for a standard and know when we’re not meeting it. Even if—especially if—we’re the only ones measuring it or recognizing when we’ve fallen short.