The Code of Ethics is a guiding document such that when a product is release onto the market and one violates their ethics or the ethics of the marketplace by using deceptive advertising, the consumer losses as does the company committing the deception. The ethical issue of false advertising can be made for any number of items. Most notably, the items sold on late night infomercials often end up not lasting for a particularly long time or just do not do what the item claims they should do. For example, the vanishing cream DD7 was and perhaps still is claimed to be an industrial strength stain remover without having the environmental contaminant effects of said types of stain removers.
However, the company has been sued in the past for claims against its product claiming that DD7 does not in fact remove stains at the remarkable rate and stain removal power the company claims. In short, the product falls short of company claims with regard to what the product is capable of doing after purchase. The code of ethics as applied to this situation is to seek remedy for the claim of the product having greater capabilities at cleaning than is true in reality. The infomercials are often designed to sell products and therefore use camera tricks to make the product appear better than would work in reality. Often the products are sold for a very short time and then are pulled from circulation. This is also inherently an ethical issue as the short-cycle of the product life raises concern if the product runs into issues and perhaps causes damages (fire) in the future.
The character, values, and integrity a leader can apply in aiding the creation of a proposed code of ethics is to establish the proper code to enable the organization to understand what inherently are the criteria to progress the company forward in preventing breaches of ethical behavior in future instances. The code of ethics can be posted on the wall inside of employee break rooms and on the walls in the hallways.
- American Association for Marriage and Family Therapy (AAMFT) (2012) Code of Ethics. Retrieved on November 12, 2013. Retrieved from: http://www.aamft.org/
- Public Relations Society of America (PRSA (2013) PRSE Code of Ethics: Preamble. Retrieved on: November 12, 2013. Retrieved from: http://www.prsa.org
