The responses here seem to have gotten into the weeds of specifics, but I think this is a fundamental point. A code of professional ethics will never get tracti

The responses here seem to have gotten into the weeds of specifics, but I think this is a fundamental point. A code of professional ethics will never get traction if it tries to be a code of personal ethics as well. If you put personal ethics into a code, there are roughly two possibilities. One is that you put in things that were already censured at another level ("we oppose convicted serial killers") and nothing changes. The other is that you put in things which are actually contested ("we oppose all lawbreaking"), and then everyone who disagrees breaks away from the whole code, and probably benefits by working with people who support their stance. A useful professional code tells you how to define malpractice, not immorality in general. Since professional censure and lost reputation are the consequences for breaking such a code, it had best be limited to actions which impugn the professional merit of the person committing them. That way, enforcing it is natural and self-interested; clients don't want to hire code-breakers, and other professionals don't want to be tainted by association. I think medicine is instructive. People hold up the field as a successful example of bounding personal morality, but the Hippocratic Oath is very much a professional statement. It happens that professional behavior for doctors produces a very clear good - lives saved - but this is not actually a feature of the code. The Oath demands that the practitioner offer their subjects competence, confidentiality, and fiduciary duty; nothing more. Questions of personal morality in the workplace go unanswered, and so the Oath outlasted massive corrections in what is moral, like ceasing to treat homosexuality as an illness. Appealing to personal morality in the workplace is fine, but it's not the same as appealing to a professional standard.