Maintaining the profession's standing

Introduction

From a professional ethics perspective, every professional has an ethical duty toward his or her profession and the public to maintain his or her profession's standing and avoid conduct that could undermine it. That duty applies to mediators as well, and they are expected to avoid conduct that might harm the profession and undermine public trust. I consider mediation to be a profession, or a practice that is undergoing a professionalization process that justifies its treatment as a profession. The profession of mediation consists of the collective of individuals who practice mediation and present themselves as mediators, organizations that represent mediators, and the mediation process as a social institution.

This view from role-morality is supported by the practice of mediation. Mediators’ codes of conduct acknowledge that mediators owe obligations to their profession in provisions that refer either directly to the profession, or indirectly to the elements that make up a profession, i.e., the process that the profession is associated with and the individuals and bodies that are involved in the practice of mediation. The Florida Rules, for example, explicitly refer to mediators’ obligation to the profession in a Rule titled “Mediator's Responsibility to the Mediation Profession,” which states that “[a] mediator shall preserve the quality of the profession.” In addition, as the process of mediation “belongs” to the profession as well as to the parties in the sense that both have legitimate interests in the way it is conducted, codes that recognize mediators’ responsibility to the process of mediation indirectly acknowledge a responsibility to the profession as well. The Illinois Standards, for example, state that “[t]he mediator's commitment shall be to … the process”; The Florida Rules have a Rule titled “Mediator's Responsibility to the Mediation Process”; the California-CDRC Standards provide that “[e]very mediator bears the responsibility of conducting mediations in a manner that instills confidence in the process”; and the Georgia Standards provide that “[m]ediators have an obligation to the integrity of the mediation process.” Other codes refer to the responsibility of mediators to their colleagues, which is another aspect of an obligation toward the profession.