Among the many casualties in today’s world is a basic modicum of professional ethics. Of doing the best for your client, honoring the trust that he or she has implicitly placed in you and not doing anything that damages their interests – which includes stalling the progress by negligence or inaction or colluding with inimical forces.
There are some values held sacred in all professions. I still remember the dictum “Facts are sacred, comment is free “from Journalism classes.
There are unwritten rules in every field. Today a doctor speaks openly about a celebrity client’s medical condition . The Hippocratic Oath wisely says “And whatsoever I shall see or hear in the course of my profession if it be what should not be published abroad, I will never divulge holding such things to be holy secrets. I will keep pure and holy both my life and my art.”
Recently when a friend zeroed in on let’s say A to handle her legal matter, after initially talking to B to acquaint him with the subject and assess if he would be equal to the task (incidentally she decided A was a better bet in the given scenario), B lost no time in speaking to A ( that conversation was made out to look like a serendipitous one )to tell him he had literally stolen the contract. As was expected A mentioned this to my friend and cautioned against discussing matters with many people. The point is the lady was in search of counsel and was well within her rights to weigh her options. B’s intent was mischievous, hoping that it would put the lady in a spot and strain her professional relationship with A. Wiser from similar experiences the lady refrained from going off on the defensive with A or over-explaining herself. That said clients too must keep up their end of the deal. Apart from professionals, even members of social organizations sometimes honor their code of ethics in the breach. Recently I reminded a member of a movement about the organization’s code of ethics which among other things says “to remember that in building up my business it is not necessary to tear down another’s; to be loyal to my clients or customers and true to myself.”It is all there cast in stone or on paper. We only need to live by these rules.