Ethical Code Of Ethics: American Psychological Association

American Psychological Association Ethical Code. http://www.apa.org/ethics/code/index.aspx# A Code of Ethics can be an overly complicated document that seeks to embrace every detail of behaviors that will not be acceptable to senior company management if found out. Meanwhile employees are pressured to deliver results which will often be enhanced if they do not strictly adhere to the Code of Ethics. The contention is that ethical codes are important to the organization; there is an ethical code, so the organization must be ethical. To the employee, it defines boundaries so they know when they are crossing them. Not all ethical codes are equal. If they protect employees from breaching some unwritten code, then they are good and fair. They
One of the main problems with codes of ethics is that they may not be well constructed and not specifically address the companies specific needs and characteristics. Sometimes the standards in the code of ethics don’t clearly specify what an employee should do with certain challenges, and can sometimes put an employee in a dilemma abiding by the standards and suffering the consequences, or going against the code to get the job done. Many employees have indicated that codes of ethics are written with good intentions and convey good intentions, but most of the time they do not acknowledge the realities and practicalities of the business environment. Some codes of ethics can set the wrong tone and seem too vague or even too legalistic. Employees have stated that some codes of ethics seem to be protective of top management rather than the whole company, especially those at the lower levels. What I have noticed with some codes of ethics is that they do sound too legalistic and they leave a lot of the common sense topics out. Most codes of ethics do not include advertising, but most companies advertise in some way. Some codes of ethics are created with benchmarks of other companies codes of ethics. When this happens, an organizations code of ethics might sound and look great, but it doesn’t fit their specific purpose and doesn’t address some of the most important aspects of the
Psychologists are involved in the difficult area of human behavior. On a daily basis they are dealing with people whose view of the world has often been distorted by their history. They may begin to lose their own guideposts. The Code of Ethics is a reference that can be consulted to make sure the psychologist does not stray from a moderate behavior path. If it creates conflicts for the practitioner the relevant Ethics Code can be taken up with a supervisor allowing for discussion and interpretation.

One Weakness of the Code of Ethics
The Council of Representatives of the APA developed the code. Anytime you have a committee design something you are likely to complicate it. Each representative has their own world view and in a committee setting feel they have to contribute more. The weakness is that adding more detail rather than making issues clearer can make them ambiguous. There are Ten Commandments in the bible and 89 ethical standards set by the