Professional Ethic Codes

UB Post

June 4th, 2010

When a nation reaches certain level of development, a significant change in social ethics can be seen. That country may have reached impressive figures in term of economic growth; however, when there is no change in social ethics, it still suffers setbacks. We may relate that point to that nation’s uniqueness, culture and history. But in a language of developed world, communication of the society members is regulated by an “invisible” hands.

That “invisible” but more tricky hand is professional ethics. In developed world, communication of the society members is regulated by certain laws and jurisdictions. But not all social relations. It is impossible for definite. Basis of the social relations is set by that nation’s history, custom, traditions, religion, or someone dictator or ruling class of the society that would eventually make up ethic codes of that nation in greater meaning.

In America, wherever you travel through its vast territory, one can observe highways, bridges, residential areas, commercial centers, public rules, safety measures, and service facilities they have created for all are so much human oriented. Each construction is large enough to ensure comfortable and safety of people. And, quality is wonderful.

Of course human is not a machine, makes a mistake. Other countries of the world closely watch, and learn lesson from this amazing country that has built condition one can corrects his or her mistake and never repeat. Around ten years ago, a Minnesota bridge collapsed down. The reason of the accident was metallic component of the bridge. Later all bridges, and commercial structures, that used such metallic components for the construction, were inspected in detail, and replaced that part. In Mongolia, this ethics view is totally upside down, especially for the road and housing constructions. Some buildings could have been better not to build. It is shameful if we listen to their “magnificent” names of those structures; something called Plaza, a two-storey place built on the land “stolen” from children’s playground. Government of the Ulaanbaatar city has given land of the city’s only children’s park to some private businesses by conspiring, but now begging for donation to build another new park.

Law makers plan to build 18-storey tower on the land of its only remained park at the back. Both constructors and government are too ignorant. What they would build is just a monument of unaccountability that would be opened by white-gloved officials in splendid ribbon-cutting ceremony. In less than a year, that structure would be damaged and go for another unexpected maintenance project.

Professional ethics make everyone accountable for their doings, especially those steps that may harm well-beings and safety of the people. For instance: to become a surgeon doctor in America, one has to graduate university level education, and need to attend two-year course later in order to get a permission to serve medical service to people. Based on all these procedures, local government of that state gives that permission for certain period.

Each surgeon doctors are members of the American Medical Association (AMA). If one fails to obey professional ethic codes or any code of conduct, and caused damage to the reputation of surgeon, the association expels that surgeon doctor from AMA membership and requests the local government to suspend that surgeon doctor’s rights.

Professional ethics concerns every moral issue to take care of their customers or users when providing a service to the public. For instance; surgeon doctors never allowed to sell and promote medicine directly and indirectly, to hide double effects of medicine or injection, to disclose privacy information of patients, and to keep silent over dishonesties being made by their fellow colleague members. Same type of rule also applies to lawyers too. In other words, the rules are made by lawyers themselves. Rights to health and right to justice are two sides of human rights. American Bar Association (ABA) sets model ethical codes related to legal profession. A journalist has also its own code of conduct. A role of each professional association is to create and maintain a code of ethical standards for those applied professionals, core values of that sectoral workers. That value is made up in mind of every person from their early life.

In all levels of academic education of America, cheating and violation of copyrights are considered as theft and that attempt may lead to expel from school. But in Mongolia or Russia, that copyright theft could be explained as a mighty rule of thumb as sincere help to others. In this point of view, different conflicting definition of ethical codes may begin. In every field of the society, there is a professional ethical code. We, Mongolians, are now should understand and count on professional ethics are the basic conditions that will make quality difference in the socio-economic development of the country. We need to find common solutions that will ensure more and more civic participation and less state interference in all professional sectors of the society as we move forward for the development of the nation.

Chicago-Denver-Ulaanbaatar

Translated by Ch.Sumiya