A Personal and Professional Code of Ethics

Introduction
A company’s code of ethics should support the organization’s core principles and a personal code of ethics should reflect an individual’s core principles and ideals. My personal code of ethics is rooted in the values I was taught over time, in the principles I learned to cherish and uphold. These principles are related to the Golden Rule: Do unto others as you would like to have done to you. In other words, I believe one should treat everyone as one wants to be treated. I value honesty, truth, communication, and innovation. I believe that the more that people engage with creative ideas, the better they can make themselves and this world. To that end, my code of ethics also has a global and sustainability perspective. I believe that the earth is finite and that we all share in the universal need to sustain the environment and protect its and our own interests with respect to it. I believe we should be working towards sustainable solutions to age old problems of energy consumption, pollution, conservation and waste. In this paper, I will describe the personal and professional code of ethics that applies to my life and my profession, show where values between my professional and personal codes of ethics overlap, and explain how I can integrate the values from my personal code of ethics into my professional code in order to build integrity.
Personal Code of Ethics
My personal code of ethics is guided by the Golden Rule: do good to others and show love to your neighbor. Implicit in this rule is the concept of being honest and truthful, of never trying to deceive anyone; there is also the sense in it that one should be of service to other people, because that is ultimately how you do good to them. By serving others, one demonstrates the capacity for servant leadership (Paris & Peachey, 2013). Serving others to help them grow, obtain what they need, gain support, and learn is part of the core principles I had that make up my personal code of ethics. May main objective with regard to my code of ethics is to serve others and demonstrate servant leadership so that others can grow and develop and in turn be of service to still more people down the road (Hunter, Neubert, Perry et al., 2013). The strategy to achieve this objective is to constantly ask others what I can do to help and always put myself at their service.
I also believe in strong communication, as communication is what helps ideas to get from one place to another and is what helps people to come together, relate to one another, and form solid relationships. My code of ethics has as its secondary objective to communicate effectively with people—and to achieve that goal I utilize my emotional and social intelligence skills so that I can pick up on verbal and non-verbal cues that people give to me regarding information that they are trying to convey and that they want from me in return (Cacamis & El Asmar, 2014). The strategy to achieve this objective is to always verbalize my communications with others and keep communications positive so that they promote supportive feelings.
I also value and respect other cultures in my Code of Ethics by recognizing that all people everywhere have their own experiences, heritage and background that provides them with a unique perspective on life. By understanding our collective perspectives and identifying the common themes and universal goodness among them, we can work together to unite towards achieving a greater common good. I recognize that everyone’s perspective is important and I make a personal effort to understand other cultures and show respect to all people by empathizing with them and putting myself in their shoes whenever I can. This too aligns with the concept of servant leadership in that by showing empathy we can give support and help each other to grow. My third objective is to show respect for other cultures by studying them and devoting some time each week to learning about a new culture so that I am more knowledgeable on all the different backgrounds and ethnicities in the world today. I will not lose my grounding in my own culture, however, because I will still engage in traditional customs and practices that are important to my friends and family within my own background.
In terms of sustainability, my Code of Ethics also focuses on working to sustain the environment. Protecting the environment is a core principle of mine as it is something that belongs to everyone in the present and those who will come in the future—so it is something we must take care of. My fourth goal with respect to this code is be more environmentally-friendly by adopting the following strategy: to recycle everything that can be recycled, to conserve energy on a daily basis by turning off lights and commuting to work, and to by products from green companies.
My Professional Code of Ethics
In business management, the professional code of ethics that applies to my profession aligns well with my personal code as it also promotes honesty, transparency, communication and sustainability. In my profession, the code of ethics that is utilized is focused on the mission of putting the customer’s needs first while simultaneously striving to make a positive difference in the world by practicing sustainability. The concept of leadership is essential to this professional code, especially for business managers, because they must lead their workers, motivate them, give them a vision to pursue and help them when they run into obstacles that they must try to get around. Authentic leadership is valued in my profession and workers respond well to it. Authentic leaders are defined as individuals who are genuine, self-aware and self-actualized: they are able to motivate themselves, communicate honestly and openly and reflect on their own strengths and weaknesses in an effort to improve themselves on a routine and consistent basis (Wong & Laschinger, 2013).
My professional code of ethics is also oriented towards the corporate social responsibility (CSR) policy of my organization, which has sustainability promotion as one of its core principles. CSR policies are based are on the principles and ethical imperatives that the organization judges to be important to the communities in which it operates. As community members are important stakeholders in the organization, their voices and opinions matter deeply to the organization, which tries to reflect their values in its own approach to giving back to the community and to making sure its business practices are conducive to the principles of the community. One of these is sustainability and in my profession it is important to promote the cause of sustainability as it shows that the organization cares about the environment and wants to protect it for stakeholders and for the future generation.
Overlapping Values
Values between my professional and personal codes of ethics overlap in numerous ways. First, my own personal value of doing good to others by serving them can be found in my professional code of ethics, which players the consumer’s interest at the heart of the company’s mission. The organization puts people first, and in that sense we share the same value: I put others first in my life, just as my profession does; and in this manner, servant leadership can be found everywhere in my profession, just like I try to demonstrate it in my life (Hunter et al., 2013). As Parris & Peachey (2013) note, servant leadership is particularly important to professional ethics because it supports one of the main reasons for a company to be in business—to serve clients.
Second, my value of promoting communication overlaps with my professional code of ethics as communication is viewed as pillar in the professional world. Success cannot be achieved without it, and strong communication implies that openness and honesty are principles that are upheld by the communicator. A leader likewise has to demonstrate strong communication by expressing to followers and to clients exactly the type of vision or service the organization will provide and is expected to accomplish. Communication is thus highly prized both by me and by my profession.
Third, my value of other cultures overlaps with my profession because in my line of work, there are people of all different backgrounds and cultures and ethnicities, and they all have to work together as a team to serve people who are just as diverse. Valuing cultures is really also what goes into helping an organization to have a strong workplace culture: respect, appreciation, and empathy are all characteristics of a strong workplace culture and this type of environment cannot be achieved without there being a strong sense of why cultures are valuable in the first place. As Cacamis and El Asmar (2014) point out, professionals have to demonstrate an ability to get along with others and to understand them through collaboration and partnership—and that cannot be achieved in a diverse world without respect for other cultures.
Fourthly, my value of sustainability overlaps with my profession because in the business world, there is universal recognition that organizations must demonstrate care for the environment as this planet is a finite source and cannot be exploited or polluted or treated recklessly without dangerous and negative repercussions being felt by one and all. As Wong and Laschinger (2013) demonstrate, professionals who are self-actualizing will work hard to turn their workplace into one that is also efficient and self-aware, and sustainability is one of the biggest outcomes of self-awareness.
Even though there is already significant overlap between my professional and personal codes of ethics and values, I can still better integrate the values from my personal code of ethics into my professional code of ethics to build integrity by 1) making it part of my professional practice to development my servant leadership skills; 2) by practicing communication skills with co-workers and clients in order to facilitate openness and effective team building and collaboration; 3) by promoting diversity and cultural awareness in the workplace and showing positive and respectful attitudes to all people regardless of their race, background, ethnicity, gender, or culture; and 5) by promoting sustainable practices in my profession through active participation in advocacy of CSR policies as well as departmental initiatives, such as recycling, energy conservation, and effective waste management.
Conclusion: How This Code Will Affect Me
My code will not change my feelings about the work that I do because as I have already shown there is considerable overlap between my professional code of ethics and my personal code of ethics. In both my private and professional life I am to do good to others and by exercising servant leadership I feel that I accomplish this objective on a regular task. I also feel that I engage in sustainable practices in both spheres, that I communicate well in each, and that I value all cultures and people and routinely show support for them.
My code will contribute to my sense of being a professional in the sense that it will support my professional aims and objectives as it aligns perfectly with my professional code of ethics. I expect that my personal code will help me to be a better professional as it will certainly help me to be a better human being. The better a person I can become, the better a professional I will make.
The sort of information data that I will need to assess to see if my code of ethics is effective will be both qualitative and quantitative. I can ask for feedback from the people I serve and engage with on a daily basis. I can look at the amount of trash I am recycling and compare it month over month to see if I am improving my sustainability practices. I can look at the number of books I have read on different cultures to see that my awareness of others is growing. I can also look at data obtained in my professional sphere to see if sales are increasing based on the implementation of my personal strategies in my professional life.
To help support my code of ethics, I need to surround myself both personally and professionally with positive energy that can come in the form of little reinforcements—such as a daily calendar of positive quotes or sayings from leaders, or from post-it notes reminding me of my strategies and objectives for the month. Little reinforcements can make a big difference in one’s daily life and all those days add up to make a big cumulative difference over the course of a year. My goal is to give myself enough support through the decoration of my workspace with positive sayings and motivational quotes and reminders to truly allow my code to have all the support it needs.
References
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Hunter, E. M., Neubert, M. J., Perry, S. J., Witt, L. A., Penney, L. M., & Weinberger, E.
(2013). Servant leaders inspire servant leaders: Antecedents and outcomes for employees and the organization. The Leadership Quarterly, 24(2), 316–331.
Parris, D. & Peachey, J. (2013). A Systematic Literature Review of Servant Leadership
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Wong, C. & Laschinger, H. (2013). Authentic Leadership, Performance, and Job
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