Professional Ethics Statement

Concordia University-Portland, OR

Running head: PROFESSIONAL ETHICS STATEMENT                                     1

Ethics are personal to our experiences, backgrounds and current states. Ethics begins from our foundations and later develop to impact our bodies, develop mindful changes, influencing: our souls, communities, professional and personal relationships. Therefore, I feel it pertinent for you as my reader to know me as a person to know my ethics.

            Palmer (2004) uses nature to encompass ethics. More specifically, he uses a direct quote from Douglas Wood in regards to a pine tree.  I have a similar connection; envision a yellow tulip, the choice of yellow because it represents friendship according to my neighborhood florist. The tulip stands strong amongst various environmental effects and rebirths itself with each season just as ethics does within the human soul.

My background and upbringing represent the bulb of a yellow tulip, my childhood and birthplace. I grew up in Duluth, MN; a small northern town where most people knew each other and of their actions. My parents were divorced and to my fortune because my father was a man who lacked strong ethics. He set an example of how to lead an unethical life. My mom had the character traits for which I hold today.  As Josephson (2010) explains, there are six pillars of character traits, which are: respect, trustworthiness, citizenship, caring, responsibility, and fairness. My mom served as an elixir to the bulb of the tulip for which my ethics base began. She used the aspects of character to remarry a man of six pillars. She married my step-dad in 1986 creating the soil of our family. The foundation my guardians laid was enriched with countless facets of positive ethics. As Josephson (2010) states in his acronym, TEAM this was the soil in

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which my family laid down. My parents created trust, reinforced by behavior, advocated compassion and honesty, and modeled positive conduct. As I reviewed Hinman’s (2002) qualities of ethics; I found how exterior influences develop internal moral structure. Just as water and sunlight are to the bulb of a tulip; I was nourished strongly by various frameworks. For instance, my family did not attend church often, therefore the religious commands had a lower influence in my life. However, my step-dad continually stated, ‘just be a good person’, and ‘the harder you work, the luckier you will be’. In this sense I am morally high in the ethics of duty and virtues.