Instead of having clear-cut solutions, many legal matters have nuances. Professional associations adopt ethical norms as a result. Ethics is, broadly speaking, the study of morality. The code of conduct demanded by society, by a company or group, or by an individual, are known as moral principles. Professional and trade organizations create codes of ethics to help members choose the right action to take in ambiguous situations. Although breaking these standards of ethics may expose one to legal jeopardy, disciplinary action against members is the main punishment. Conflicts of interest are directly tied to ethical dilemmas. Conflicts of interest occur when a professional has duties to the public, a customer, an employer, the profession, or even to himself or herself. Finding the competing interests and obligations and then deciding which obligations or interests take precedence is a common solution to ethical dilemmas.
Although it can be challenging to define an ethical breach, a professional should be able to spot one when it occurs. The ambiguous statement that “you’ll know it when you see it,” however, offers little assurance. Due to their frequency, some potential breaches are simple to spot (e.g., acting in the same matter for two competing parties is obviously a conflict of interest). Normally, a code is required to identify which duty applies when obligations are owed simultaneously to many parties.
Common Ground
Ethics and law are closely related to one another. This is true because a society’s collective sense of morality serves as the basis for established and created laws. Therefore, it should come as no surprise that behavior deemed unethical, or more particularly, in the case of a design professional, contravenes the applicable code of ethics, which will typically also result in other legal repercussions. Criminal repercussions and civil liability are the two main categories of legal consequences that most members of the public face. The third group of repercussions, such as a temporary or permanent loss of professional standing, may also apply to design professionals and may result from disciplinary actions. Because they can lead to incarceration, criminal penalties are the most severe in terms of severity. Civil penalties are typically issued against a defendant through monetary damages. The punishment for breaking a code of ethics may include a warning, a suspension, a fine, losing the ability to practice, or needing additional training or review.
It is simple to devise an instance of behavior that could result in legal, civil, and disciplinary action all at once. One such instance is fraud. An engineer who defrauds a client may be charged under the Criminal Code of Canada, subject to disciplinary action, and subject to the client’s legal claim for damages. The well-known prohibition against “double jeopardy” (or, in this case, triple jeopardy), which forbids someone from being charged with a crime twice for the same offense, does not apply. It does not stop criminal charges from being filed concurrently with civil and disciplinary actions. The hypothetical engineer in this illustration runs the risk of receiving a prison term, being required to make restitution to the victimised client, and losing their licence.
In the vast majority of instances, a design professional’s criminal behaviour related to their employment will also be seen as unethical. Contrarily, not every unethical behaviour constitutes a crime, and it is safe to conclude that the majority of instances in which a design professional is found guilty of unethical behaviour do not result in criminal prosecution. For instance, an architect acting concurrently for two clients with competing interests would probably be found to have violated the relevant code of ethics, but only in extremely exceptional cases would such behaviour be found to be subject to criminal prosecution.
In most cases, the applicable code of conduct in each province specifies the following parties that architects, engineers, and geoscientists have obligations to: the public’s, the client’s, the employer’s, and the profession’s duties. A professional also has a responsibility to themselves. However, compared to obligations owed to other parties, this duty usually comes last. When there is a conflict between two sets of responsibilities or roles, many of the most difficult and difficult ethical dilemmas arise.