R. M. Mac Iver

“ Within the profession there is not, as a rule, the situation where one group habitually employs for gain another group whose function, economic interest and social position are entirely distinct from its own. The professions have thus been better able to adjust the particular interests of their members to their common interest and so to attain a clearer sense of their relationship to the whole community. ”

“ Professional group ethics are, as a matter of fact, never isolated, and thus they are saved from the narrowness and egotism characteristic of racial group ethics. Their dangers are far more easily controlled, and their services to society, the motive underlying all codes, vastly outweigh what risks they bring. They provide a support for ethical conduct less diffused than that inspired by nationality, less exclusive than that derived from the sense of class, and less instinctive than that begotten of the family. They witness as they grow to the differentiation of community. ”

“ Sharp dealing, "unfair" competition, the exaction of the pound of flesh, may be reprobated and by the decent majority condemned, but behind such an attitude there is no definite code which business men reinforce by their collective sense of its necessity and by their deliberate adoption of it as ex- pressly binding upon themselves. There is no general brotherhood of business men from which the offender against these sentiments, who does not at the same time overtly offend against the law of the land, is extruded as un- worthy of an honorable calling. ”

“ As traditional and authoritative ethics weaken in the social process, the ethics formulated in the light of function bring to the general standard of the community a continuous and creative reinforcement. ”

“ It cannot be said that business has yet attained a specific code of ethics, resting on con- siderations broader than the sense of self-interest and supplementing the minimal requirements of the law. Such a code may be in the making, but it has not yet established itself, and there are formidable difficulties to be overcome. When we speak of business ethics, we generally mean the principles of fair play and honorable dealing which men should observe in business. ”

“ To illustrate, in the profession of teaching the technical interest in the
system of imparting knowledge is one thing, and the cultural interest in the knowledge imparted quite another. Even more obvious is the case of the minister of religion, whose technique of ministration is as a rule very simple and whose main interest lies in the significance of the doctrine. The dis- tinction is clear also in the spheres of the sciences and of the fine arts where the interest in truth or beauty may be discerned from the interest in the modes of investigation or of expression. ”

“ Another aspect of the general bias is found in the shuffling of responsibility under the cloak of the code. This is most marked in the public services, particularly the civil service and the army and navy — and incidentally it may be noted that the problem of professional ethics is aggravated when the profession as a whole is in the employ of the state. "An official," says M. Faguet in one of his ruthless criticisms of officialdom (The Dread of Responsibility) , "is a man whose first and almost only duty is to have no will of his own." ”

“ So with the engineer, the surveyor, the accountant, or the technician generally, who has to maintain standards of service and of efficiency against the bias of profit-making. So with the manager, the secretary, or the officer of a corporation — for here business as- sumes most nearly the aspect of a profession — who has to reconcile the trust imposed on him by his employers with the duty he owes to himself and to those whose service he in turn controls. ”

“ In other professions it may be harder to identify the cultural as distinct from the technical interest, but if we in- terpret the term culture widely enough to include, for example, such objects as health and the beauty of workman- ship, it may be maintained that the cultural interest belongs to every pro- fession and is in fact one of the criteria by which to determine whether or not a given occupation is to be classed as a profession. ”

“ In business there is one particular difficulty retarding any like develop- ment of unity and responsibility. It may safely be said that so long as with- in the industrial world the cleavage of interest between capital and labor, em- ployer and employe, retains its present character, business cannot assume the aspect of a profession. ”

“ The limited "corpora- tions" of the business world being thus ruled out, the whole profession assumes something of the aspect of a corporation. It supplements the ad- vantage or the necessity of the small- scale, often the one-man, unit by con- certed action to remove its "natural" disadvantage, that free play of uncontrolled individualism which undermines all essential standards. It achieves an integration not of form but of spirit. Of this spirit nothing is more significant than the ethical code which it creates. ”

“ Here, therefore, in the structure of the general professional interest we find a rich mine of ethical problems, still for the most part unworked but into which the growing ethical codes of the professions are commencing to delve. A still greater wealth of the material for ethical reflection is re- vealed when we turn next to analyze the relation of the professional interest as a whole to that of the community. ”

“ The demarcation and integration of the profession is a necessary prelimi- nary to the establishment of the code. Each profession becomes a functional group in a society whose tendency is to organize itself less and less in terms of territory or race or hereditary status, and more and more in terms of func- tion. Each profession thus acquires its distinctive code. It is important to observe that what is distinctive is the code rather than the standard. ”

“ Ethics cannot be summed up into a series of inviolate rules or command- ments which can be applied every- where and always without regard of cir- cumstances, thought of consequences, or comprehension of the ends to be attained. What is universal is the good in view, and ethical rules are but the generally approved ways of pre- serving it. The rules may clash with one another, and then the only way out is to look for guidance to the ideal. The physician may have to deceive his patient in order to save his life. ”

“ The lawyer, the priest and the physician may have to observe secrecy and keep confidences under conditions where it might be the layman's duty to divulge the same, for the conception of the social welfare which should induce the one to speak out may equally in the peculiar professional relationship com- pel the other to silence. Every pro- fession has its own problems of conduct, in the interpretation within its own province of the common principles of ethical conduct. ”

“ Their growth is part of the movement by which the fulfilment of function is substituted as a social force for the tradition of birth or race, by which the activity of service supersedes the passivity of station. ”

“ Thus the medical profession has incurred to many minds a serious liability, in spite of the devo- tion of its service to actual patients, by its failure for so long to apply the pre- ventive side of medicine, in particular to suggest ways and means for the prevention of the needless loss of life and health and happiness caused by the general medical ignorance and help- lessness of the poor. ”

“ The latter can be realized only when the ideal of service controls the ideal of profits. We do not mean that busi- ness men are in fact selfish while professional men are altruistic. We mean simply that the ideal of the unity of service which business renders is not yet explicitly recognized and pro- claimed by itself. It is otherwise with the professions. They assume an obli- gation and an oath of service. "A profession," says the ethical code of the American Medical Association, "has for its prime object the service it can render to humanity ”

“ So with the university professor, who has to uphold the necessity of academic freedom against the pressure of prejudice and the domination of controlling interests which care less for truth than for their own success. ”

“ The pay is not derived by the several 'artists' from their respective 'arts.' But the truth is, that while the 'art' of medicine gives health, and the 'art' of the builder builds a house, another 'art' attends them which is the 'art' of pay. ”

“ The different codes of racial or national groups reveal variant ethical standards, but the different codes of professional groups represent rather the deliberate application of a generally accepted social standard to particular spheres of conduct. ”

“ Thus while the technical and economic interest usually go together and while, for ex- ample, the maintenance of standards usually works towards the economic advantage of the profession, these may be unfortunately disjoined. Better technique may at points be antago- nistic to professional gain. ”