Lloyd C. Irland
Lecturer and Senior Scientist, Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Studies
President,The Irland Group
This short book offers a primer on professional ethics. Many
practitioners and students have felt a need for an accessible
introduction.
The book includes material that has been used in a one-credit
reading and discussion course at the Yale School of Forestry &
Environmental Studies for several years, and also in our one day
Professional Ethics workshops. It offers several articles, most
previously published, that discuss specific issues in more detail.
Finally, it offers a series of resources for learning and an appendix of
ethics codes of several major professional societies. While the codes
are all available on the Web,it seemed to us that placing them together
with the introductory material would be an aid to learning.
In the previously published items, minor edits have been made to
delete citations to superseded documents or otherwise avoid
confusion.Their literature citations have been retained with them and
not moved to the end in a comprehensive bibliography section.
My hope is that this book will ease the learning curve both for
students and for mid-career people who are shouldering new
responsibilities in natural resource and environmental management
careers. Ethical issues can and will arise in private employment, for
consultants, for government officials, and in the nonprofit sector. A
little preparation will go a long way to help you navigate these choices
in ways that you will continue to feel comfortable about in the future,
and that you would feel comfortable explaining to one of your own
children or family members.
