PROFESSIONAL ETHICS IN THE GEOLOGICAL PROFESSION

Interest in professional ethics in the geological sciences has grown dramatically in the last decade. This interest is late compared to many other professions. Professional geological organizations, state licensing boards, and academic institutions are working to educate the current and future members of the profession on the importance and role of professional ethics in geological careers. This increased interest is stimulated in part by the increasing public awareness of professional ethics and the fact that many professionals believe that ethical decisions are as challenging if not more so that the technical problems encountered.

The importance of professional ethics has been dramatically confirmed by the results of the National Association of State Boards of Geology (ASBOG) Task Analysis 2005, a survey of the practice of geology in the United States and Canada. This survey of 7,770 randomly selected licensed practicing geologists in the United States and Canada to determine what licensed geologists do in their careers included a section on professional ethics. The ethics survey including topics such as conflict of interest, plagiarism, retaliation against “whistle blowers”, etc. confirmed that the profession considers ethics important. Issues such as practicing without a license, conflict of interest, failure to maintain confidentiality, invoicing, and retaliation against “whistle blowers” are most serious. An encouraging element of the survey is that there is an inverse relationship between the seriousness of the ethical issue and the frequency with which it is encountered in the profession, i.e. the more serious issues are encountered less frequently. There is a strong direct correlation in results obtained from US and Canadian respondents.

Universities are beginning to include formal professional ethics education in their geo-science degrees. Different approaches are used including; establishing formal professional ethics courses in geo-science departments, requiring students to take ethics courses in other university departments, and/or including of ethics training in existing geo-science courses.