A recent article published by the American Society of Safety Professionals (ASSP) addresses professional ethics and how safety specialists can apply professional ethics to their daily work.

ASSP’s Management Practice Specialty shared insights from Wyatt Bradbury, area manager for Hitachi Rail and adjunct ethics professor at the University of Alabama-Birmingham, who defines ethics broadly as a mutually agreed-upon set of principles held by an individual or group that serves as the basis for situational reasoning and conduct.

“Safety professionals carry their professional ethics with them when entering any new organization. Those ethics may fold into an organization’s code of ethics, or they may conflict with the code. Because an organization’s code of ethics encompasses the many different professionals who work for it, the code may not adhere exactly to the safety professional’s code of ethics,” ASSP reports.

To that end, Bradbury recommends providing input into the code, to ensure an individual’s professional ethics harmonize with their organization’s ethics. Furthermore, when conflicts arise between professional and organizational ethics, the expert advises seeking the “creative middle way” or identifying an innovative compromise that meets all the competing objectives in the best possible manner.

Access the full article, “What are Professional Ethics and How Do They Provide Safety?” on ASSP’s website.