A New Model to Help Students Develop Professional Ethics

Professional ethics education requires the development of abstract principles and values among students. The learning process requires students to confront true ethical dilemmas. This study puts forward a theoretical model for helping students develop professional ethics and reports an empirical study on evaluating student feedback in learning professional ethics. Practitioners are involved in carrying out a pre-workshop assessment, seminars, experience sharing, and a post-workshop assessment. Unethical practices in the real estate industry are commonplace worldwide (ICAC 2003a; Long, 1998; Roulac, 2006; and Jenman, 2007), especially during poor sales periods (Miller, 1999). Fortunately, improvement in professional ethics in the real estate industry is found in recent research by Izzo (2000a), Roulac (2006), and Larsen, Coleman, and Petrick (2007). What is missing in this research is a discussion of how to help students develop professional ethics. Very often courses on professional ethics teach students the hard-and-fast rules stated in a code of ethics, and what one ‘‘oughtto’’ and ‘‘ought-not-to’’ do [as in the six principles of universal morality of Cooper (2005, pp. 33–34)]. Ethical education can become a ‘‘brain-wash’’ exercise or dogmatism, which is not an effective way to present learning material to students. In fact, students do not find it difficult to make moral decisions between ‘‘ought-to’’ and ‘‘ought-not-to’’ or between right and wrong, especially when a code of ethics is available and when the consequences are well informed. The ethical dilemma that a student studying for a professional degree needs to learn is how to decide if choosing ‘‘between two positive [or two negative] values, such as between mercy and justice or between long-term goals and short-term goals’’ (Long, 1998, p. 15), or when ‘‘legitimate arguments can be made for several competing alternatives’’ (Kline, 2005, p. 13), such as the well-known Heniz’s Dilemma in Kohlberg (1969). Thus, it is argued that ethics education is not effectively taught with simple reliance on traditional lectures or tutorials. Ethics is the recognition of a value system instead of an articulation of knowledge, so it cannot be assessed by traditional examinations or assignments. Ethics is more commonly assessed by Rest’s (1986) Defining Issues Test (DIT), as used by Izzo (2000a) in his analysis of ethics in the real estate industry. It is based on the Kohlberg’s (1969) six stages of moral development theory, which is more on assessing the decision-making procedures and the justifications for a specific course of action. Professional ethics education is further complicated by the fiduciary nature of the profession. Professions are regarded as ‘‘state-supported organizations that have been *University of Hong Kong, Pokfulam, Hong Kong or [email protected]. Name /9604/04 04/28/2008 10:10AM Plate # 0 pg 42 # 2 42 Journal of Real Estate Practice and Education JREPE (Precision Write)