Ethics for Professionals Class

Building the Professional You: Your Code of Conduct and Mission Statement

For this task, you are to engage in 3 tasks designed to aid you on your path as a professional. You are to develop 3 pieces to your professional puzzle:

• Your personal code of conduct
• Your professional code of conduct
• Your personal mission statement

Research codes of conduct for different professions and organizations, and also research mission statements of different organizations. You may want to start with organizations that fall within your proposed career path. Based on your research, develop a personal code of conduct that is based on your personal values, a professional code of conduct based on your personal values and the values of your chosen profession, and a personal mission statement.

For your personal code of conduct, consider the following questions:

• What makes you truly happy?
• What you value most?
• What gives you personal and professional fulfillment?
• What excites you?
• What are your gifts and talents?

For your professional code of conduct, consider the following questions:

• What are your ethical responsibilities as a member of your proposed profession?
• How does your conduct support the mission of your organization?
• What basic principles of ethical behavior should be modeled?
• How can this code guide you through an ethical decision-making process?
• How will you deal with complaints regarding your behavior?

For your personal mission statement, consider the following:

• What is your vision of the world?
• How will you make that vision a reality (or how will you contribute to that vision of the world)?
• Describe your standards of behavior to which you will hold yourself.
• Include all facets of your being: your emotional, spiritual, mental, and physical components.
• How will you define your character?
• What image do you want to portray to the world?
• To whom are you directing this mission statement?

Assemble all 3 statements into 1 document with distinct sections for each statement. There is no particular ordering in the document that must be used, but it might make the most sense to start with the personal mission statement, and then draft the 2 codes of conduct. It is acceptable for elements of the personal and professional codes of conduct to be the same because your personal and professional lives do overlap.