Museums are directly associated with documenting, preserving, exhibiting, interpreting and investigating tangible and intangible natural and cultural heritage. Museums' board of directors and museum professionals are responsible for protecting and developing both heritage and strategic management and are associated with supplying supervision for this purpose through ethics. Ethics is a concept which is sometimes referred to as morality, moral philosophy or moral science by Western tradition which tries to understand the necessities and nature of the concept of morality in order to distinguish the error directly. The International Council of Museums (ICOM) has established a Code of Ethics for Museums in order to define the limits of these responsibilities and to establish a standard approach to museology, and to promote the recognition of values shared by the international museum community by setting minimum professional standards. This reference tool, known as code of ethics, guides field experts in terms of museology approaches and is presented as a set of principles supported by rules detailing the expected professional practice. The museum code of ethics were first translated into 38 languages after being adopted in 1986 and renewed in 2004. It is adopted among the conditions that museums should consider in order to ensure sustainability. Ethical codes also support sustainability process of the museums and they are related to several issues, such as collection management in museums, exhibition and interpretation processes, procurement and regulatory compliance processes, museum resource management, security in the museum, reimbursement and compensation, planning of museum activities, community and audience relations. Sustainability involves reviewing the first principles of museum work, assessing the cultural needs and opportunities of communities, and examining how organizations are directed to these cultural situations. Code of ethics are also designed as a professional self-control tool for museums. ICOM expects from the member museums to adopt these rules and to comply with them in museum studies. Ethical codes address various issues related to the museum, such as purchasing and harmonization processes in museums, management of museum resources, security in the museum, return and compensation policies. The most important function of code of ethics is to improve the knowledge of museums in preserving, interpreting and introducing the natural and cultural heritage of humanity and facilitating the adaptation of the museum to the developing museum definition as the primary witnesses of this process. ICOM regularly promotes and advocates ethical codes that it has developed during training sessions around the world, including practical case studies to help museum professionals implement values and principles. This study comprises the evaluation of museum ethic codes in the UK, Australia, Canada, USA and South Africa, which determine national museum ethics based on the ethics codes prepared by ICOM and evaluates them in the context of contemporary museum definition and aims to determine the ethical codes to be adopted in the "new normal in museology" process that emerged after the COVID 19 pandemic. The study also emphasizes the importance of social functions in museum studies conducted in these countries within the context of museum ethical codes and the use of ethical codes in the context of the contemporary museum definition is evaluated over social functions.
