Building an ethical future

Do we need a robust ethical context for professionals working for a more sustainable world? Fellow Stephen Hill argues that moral values must link our professional and personal lives

Don’t read JK Galbraith on The Economics of Innocent Fraud if you want reassurance about our ability to make the right choices. He quietly exposes our collective passivity in the face of commercial and political corporatism, and its legal but inexorable erosion of our public lives and spaces: ‘innocent’ it isn’t.

Since the credit crunched, difficult choices have to be made and we are
choosing our welfare above that of our own dependants. How are we doing with the other big choices of the day – compassion or self-interest?

Consider the recent furore in the architectural press about whether to work on the Beijing Olympics or in Dubai. Architectural celebrities traded ethical positions for a few weeks. But as the news on which celebrity feeds moved on, the froth fizzled away and the debate crawled back into the shadows, leaving ordinary professionals where? Mute and frustrated observers confronted with much more real and everyday ethical dilemmas to tackle in silence and alone.

More or less everything we do has to be achieved through planning. Since 2004, the underlying principle of the new spatial planning system is ‘to promote sustainable development’. That’s what the government says.

Most of the professional bodies have worthy Victorian objects to serve the public interest, grounded in their patrician concern for public health.
Sustainable development might be its 21st-century equivalent, but with a far greater emphasis on social equity and justice. These objects are often claimed to mean: public first, client second. However, how many times have you heard any client challenged in that way?

What should we do when asked to do less than we know we could, or should, to get planning permission? Whose is the ‘innocent fraud’ here? Professional bodies and peer support might have a role in ensuring that there is an open debate about what may be at stake, and how to negotiate any contested ethical positions and opposing values.

We need to consider how our professional values differ from our personal values and self-interests. In that big planning application up the road, what are your expectations of the developer and his professional team? Their actions, and their indirect and often unseen impacts, affect the immediate quality of life for you and your family.

The Professionals for a Sustainable World project is looking at three interlinked issues:
•    The absence of a coherent new paradigm for sustainability in which to apply new knowledge and to redefine the public interest values. Professionals need to reflect this in their everyday practice.
•    The weakness of action learning cultures, such as on-the-job training; sharing acquired knowledge and skills with clients and across traditional professional interests; communities of knowledge and identities.
•    The continuing erosion of ethical values and social context as the fundamental guiding principles for personal and professional behaviour.

Galbraithian innocence harks back to the Garden of Eden. But we know more stuff now: Eve’s apple provided us with knowledge, but that wasn’t enough. We know it falls to the ground when dropped. All that tells us is that we have to ask better questions. Come and ask better questions.