ETHICAL CODE OR ETHOS?
Professions often develop ethical codes to guide the behavior of their members. The codes typically provide guidelines for dealing with the most common ethical predicaments faced by practitioners. The guidelines usually reflect a consensus of beliefs held by members of professional organizations. Established and dominant professional organizations with homogeneous memberships enjoy the best prospects for developing ethical codes that provide extensive and detailed guidance. Although a professional organization for policy analysts exists (the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management), it is young, still relatively small, and seeks to serve a very diverse membership with strong ties to other, more established, professions. Not surprisingly, it has not yet tried to develop an ethical code. Even when it becomes more established, the great diversity of its members and the organizational contexts in which they work suggest the difficulty of developing a code that directly speaks to a wide range of circumstance.