Middle Market M & A, 2nd Edition

CHAPTER 11Professional Standards and Ethics

Profession: “An occupation in which a professed knowledge of some subject, field, or science is applied; a vocation or career, especially one that involves prolonged training and a formal qualification.”

Standard: “An authoritative or recognized exemplar of correctness, perfection, or some definite degree of any quality.”

Ethics: “A system or set of moral principles.”

Oxford English Dictionary

When businesspeople conclude a deal, they shake hands. That handshake is symbolic of the fact that a deal is a promise: If you do this, I will do that. Because a deal is a promise, business is—or it ought to be—inherently ethical. Yet in the heat of daily battles in doing deals, conscious thought about professional standards and ethics is often overlooked. A glance at the business news or a look around one's business network all too often reveals breaches of professional standards and ethics, inappropriate, and even criminal behavior—in many cases by those of repute. Pressured by time, cost, short‐term economic advantage, or a host of other self‐justifications, any of us can be tempted to take a path of least resistance—the easier wrong. So it is that ingraining into one's character the highest of professional standards and ethics becomes paramount, not just to prevent loss or punishment but, as Aristotle pointed out in the context of lying, because it is in each of our interests to do so. If that handshake does not carry a promise you can ...