The idea that a public professional may serve as citizens on behalf of us may not be appropriate. Public professionals may act on behalf of the citizens since they have an obligation to the citizens. However, their responsibility to the citizens has a lot to do with representing the interests of the citizens. In most cases, public professional may choose to act on behalf of the citizens for purposes of increasing their efficiency in conducting their duties. Public professionals who choose to follow this path normally neglect a lot of ideals of ethics that are required in their profession. Elected officials have a role to play in serving individuals who have voted for him or her. Such a position warrants the application of ethics in the running of duties that an elected official needs to perform.
In the process of acting on behalf of the citizens, the public professionals may be tempted to represent their own views more than the views of the citizens. The public professional’s status may limit him or her to understand the values that the larger portion of citizens value. According to Cooper (72) an elected official is normally accountable to the people he or she represents. This brings about the concept of accountability. Hence it becomes inappropriate for a public professional to act as a citizen when performing his duties.
When a public official acts in lieu of the citizens, there is a certain extent of conflict of interest. Citizens expect their every demand to be met by public professionals. Citizens may sometimes acts in unethically manner. If the public professional acts as a citizen in performing his duties, he or she may be inclined to act unethically. For instance, employees normally may demonstrate to demand actions in cases where there is neglect such as poor services in the organization. The role of the public professional in this scenario is to address such problems, which would otherwise be difficult to address if he acted in lieu of the employees.
Work Cited
Cooper, Terry L. The responsible administrator an approach to ethics for the administrative
role. 6th ed. Hoboken: John Wiley & Sons, 2012. Print.
