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Chapter Twenty. The Professional's Code

Although there is a little bit of Peter Pan in each of us, maturity brings with it the desire to contribute to the communal welfare. The fulfillment of this yearning, I repeat, provides the engineer with his primary existential pleasure.

SAMUEL C. FLORMAN

One of the signs of a mature profession is the presence of a code of ethics or standard of professional conduct. Legally, professionals are held to a higher standard for their work than nonprofessionals performing work in the same field. If your friend the plumber tells you to take Alka-Seltzer for a stomachache and the problem turns out to be a ruptured appendix, the plumber hasn't done anything unethical. If your friend were a doctor and told you the same thing without conducting an adequate examination, that doctor's advice would be an unethical act.

A code of ethics establishes the standard of conduct for each profession.^[1] Certified Public Accountants are required to pass a three-hour exam covering the accounting code of ethics. Lawyers are required to pass a half-day ethics exam. In mature professions, workers can be disbarred or lose their licenses for serious violations of their ethics codes.