REFLECTION PAPER: CODE OF ETHICS BY KERWIN SALVADOR P. CARAGOS

I reflected that indeed ethics mean various things to various people, but generally it's coming to know what it right or wrong and doing what is right.

Violations of a private organization's code of ethics usually can subject the violator to the organization's remedies (such as restraint of trade based on moral principles). The effectiveness of code of ethics depends on the extent to which management supports them with sanctions and rewards. Violations of a code of conduct may subject the violator to the organization's remedies which can under particular circumstances result in the termination of employment.  In a membership context, failure to comply with a code of practice can result in expulsion from the professional organization.

In the Philippine context, the Katrina Halili – Doctor Hayden Kho Jr. Sex Video Scandal is an example of a professional organization investigating a member for alleged violations of the code of ethics of the medical profession.  The Philippine Medical Association (PMA) Ethics Committee chaired by Dr.Santiago del Rosario  grilled Doctor Kho amid the furor over his sex videos involving different women. 

In the Philippine Legal Profession,  Justice Jose Sabio, Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the Philippines, was suspended for two months by the Supreme Court for talking about his case outside the court. He entertained his colleague, Justice Francis de Borja, and his brother Atty.Camilo Sabio, who both tried to influence him on the Meralco/GSIS case. One communicated to him the promise of monetary consideration, while the other dangled the possibility of promotion to the Supreme Court. Justice Sabio could have refused to talk about the case. He could have denied being the ponente. Howsoever he evaded the intimations made by his friend and his brother is fine, so long as he didn’t talk about the case outside the court and lay himself open to temptation and challenges to his integrity. A member of the BAR wrote that Justice Sabio got off lightly. He should have desisted from doing acts that tend to subvert the integrity of the courts–and by extension, the legal profession. He wrote:

“That Justice Sabio is a professor in Legal Ethics should even be considered an aggravating circumstance, as his education should have better forewarned and guided him in his actions. In the final analysis, whether the amount involved in the bribery case was P10Million or P50Million doesn’t matter. What matters is the fact that justices live in a glass house. In wielding the power to deprive any citizen of his life, liberty and property, the members of the judiciary should be acutely and constantly aware that they too, are subject to the same possibility of deprivation for cause. If nothing else, this heightened awareness ought to make them doubly wary of the smallest decisions they make.”
 

I reflected that is very important for a Manager to know about how to conduct one’s self in the society, and making goals for an organization must always be within the bounds of law and human decency,  every decision and action must be acceptable to the business community so that questions of integrity or lack thereof will not hound me.