Examining the profession and the practice of business ethics

During the evolution of business ethics as a profession, the fields it draws from have identified separate knowledge and skills they believe define business ethics; however, there is little agreement among these fields. This means the strengths of each are seldom combined to guide ethical decision making in business and industry, which leaves business ethicists looking less effective, and perhaps less professional, than their counter-parts in medicine and law. It also means that those who have been thrust into the role of guiding business ethics - or those who have added the title of ethics consultant after their name, without having the preparation to do so, have no standards to look to. This article examines one of the touchstones of mature professions, performance standards by which members of the profession can measure themselves and the profession can self-monitor. Further, it suggests that business ethics has not yet addressed one of the standards by which all professions are measured, that of service. Finally, the article describes how other professions have used qualitative methods to develop performance standards and suggests that the leaders in the filed of business ethics could use some of these methods to identify the sets of knowledge and skills that ought to be the standards for the profession and practice of business ethics.