Chapter 6 Ethical considerations for the information professions – Elizabeth A. Buchanan

Ethics is defined as the philosophical study of moral behavior, of moral decision making. The difference between morality and ethics is morality is the sense of conscience and right and wrong that we derive from upbringing while ethics is more structured and deliberative; Three major realms of ethics can be identified: Descriptive – focusing on existing situations or conditions; normative – focusing on what ought to be; and thirdly meta-ethics the logical analysis of moral language and the aim to make precise the meaning of moral terms and clarify the moral arguments that are at stake. Codes of ethics are understood as sets of best practices.
Professional ethics is professionals are experts in a field, which provides them an advantage over the lay person and that professional work has the potential to impact either positively or negatively the general at large. Johnson identified four channels through which professional codes of ethics should be judged: obligations to society, obligations to employer, obligations to clients and obligations to colleagues and organizations. As information professionals we have the ethical responsibility to uphold principles of social, personal and organizational responsibility. Ethical codes of conduct provide guidelines and frameworks but may more often than not fail to give us answers. The phase 1 is issue definition and evaluation examples of the questions are: Are you confident of your competence in the issue?, Who are the stakeholders or affected persons? How would you describe the situation to an outsider and an insider? and many more. The second phase is action/inaction evaluation and implementation.