What is the difference between a code of conduct and a code of ethics or values?
Organisations commonly develop codes of conduct to tell people inside and outside the organisation the standards of conduct that are expected of staff and that the organisation will observe in dealing with the public. The code should describe what a public official should do, or not do, in specific situations. Ethics or values are the principles that codes of conduct and other corporate policies are based on. They are more like goals that employees are expected to aspire to rather than rules to be enforced. Some codes of conduct combine the two by including a statement of the organisation’s values as an introduction to the code. This is logical because a code is essentially an application of the values to the organisation’s day-to-day work.
