Professional Relationships

Modern professional codes of ethics cover more relationships than the two basic ones covered by the Hippocratic code. In general they also include relationships between employees and employers and between the professional and the public in general.

1. Professional Relationships with Employers:

a. Loyalty

In general employees are expected to show loyalty to their employers – they are expected to recognize and help the employer achieve her ends. But there are limits to loyalty, for example the employee must retain the right to support the political party of their choice without threat of job loss, and they must not be expected to buy only company products, in preference to the competitor’s.

b. Trade Secrets

In a free labor market it is difficult to protect trade secrets. A company can afford to hire a competitor’s employee at a higher price than the competitor if the employee carries information that gives the company a market lead over its competitor. Companies attempt to guard against this practice in several ways. Employees can be asked to sign agreements promising not to reveal trade secrets. They can even be expected to agree not to work in the same industry for a set period after they leave a company. There is a moral sense in which loyalty should carry over beyond the term of employment.

2. Professional Relationships with Clients:

There are roughly three ways the relationship can be seen and it is necessary for a smooth running relationship that there be some agreement about what sort of relationship it is. Essentially the difference concerns the balance in decision making between the company and the client.

If the company is seen as the agent of the client, it simply carries out the client’s wishes; it does not make any significant decisions of ite own. When it has to make a decision about aspects of design that are not obvious from the client’s wishes, then it must return to the client for clarification. This is the agency model.

At the other extreme, the client may transfer all the decision-making authority into the hands of the company. In this case the company first learns as much as it can about what the client wants and then, during the process of development, makes all the decisions about how best to realize the client’s desires. This latter is the paternalistic model.

In between these two extremes an interactive model where the client is engaged in making decisions but is advised by the company. The decisions are not entirely the client’s nor are they entirely the company’s. Decisions are arrived at through a process of dialogue in which the client expresses her wishes and desires and the company advises on what is possible from a practical and what is advisable from their own point of view of superior experience.

3. Professional Relationship with the Public in General:

The obligation of the professional to the public at large can be seen as a kind of implicit contract that the professional makes with society to allow him, and not just anyone, to practice his trade. Society in general, through its legal system gives the professional the right to maintain a monopoly in the practice of his profession, on the understanding that the professional will act for the good of society.

4. Professional Relationships with other Professionals:

A popular image of the professional organization is that its sole purpose is to promote the interests of the professionals themselves. It is like a monopoly of practitioners who have managed to corner the market and convince the establishment that they have some special skill that no-one else has. Thus they manage to legalize their particular monopoly and squeeze out and other practitioners. Once organized they can set their own fees and standards of performance. One has only to recollect the legal profession as portrayed in Charles Dickens’ Bleak House to get the image.

But even with such a cynical view of the professional organization, there is reason to suppose that it is in the interest of the profession to adopt some controls on the behavior of heir members. An individual who does not act in the interest of the client will damage the reputation of the profession as a while. And when the trust that people place in the profession is damaged, the people will begin to look for alternative sources of expertise – they will turn to alternative medicine, or begin to practice their own conveyance.