In what may be yet another sad sign of the times, experts like doctors, lawyers, and accountants may now have to take ethics CPE courses. Yes, yes it’s true: as part of maintaining their licenses to practice, these professionals may now be needed to learn the variance between right and wrong.
To be certain, an ethics continuing education course is commendable, and if it’s important then it is good that such a thing exists. But the fact that it must be essential at all – since ethics courses already form a part of the majority of people’s educational background, whether as undergraduates or in law school, med school, and so on – is disturbing.
Yes, life is filled with morally ambiguous situations, and having an application that applies the eternal verities to modern times should prove valuable. But ethics CPE courses only came about because of the many abuses that have cropped up within the careers. It is an unfortunate commentary that the problem should be so bad as to warrant such courses – for one may presume that the certifying bodies governing professional licensure would not have compelled the requirement otherwise.
That said, and things being what they are, it is a wholly optimistic development that an official stance has come out against abuse and misuse. For the prerequisite of such continuing expert education curricula demonstrates at least some measure of committment to ethical standards from the industry itself. The requirement, moreover, represents an agreed-upon goal: this is what a lawyer is, this is what an accountant does, this is how a doctor plays its part.
Not to pick on doctors, lawyers, and accountants, naturally, as the term “the professions” is also applied to K-12 teachers and, if the ACSM and others have their way, even to personal fitness trainers as well (!), but suffice it to say, one may view the emergence and developing popularity of such curricula as a positive development.
