Code of conduct

The Chartered Institute of Ergonomics & Human Factors has a Code of Professional Conduct as detailed below. All members are expected to abide by it. If you believe that a CIEHF member is in breach of this code of conduct, please contact us for further advice.

1. In pursuit of their profession, members of all grades of the Chartered Institute of Ergonomics & Human Factors shall at all times value integrity, impartiality and respect for evidence, and shall sustain the highest ethical standards.
2. Within their obligations under the law, they shall hold the interest, safety and welfare of those in receipt of their services or affected by those services to be paramount at all times. Those carrying out research shall safeguard the interests of participants, and ensure that their work is in keeping with the highest standards of scientific integrity.
3. They shall maintain and develop their professional competence, and to recognise and work within its limits, striving always to identify and overcome factors restricting this competence.
4. They shall not lay claim, directly or indirectly, to have competence in any area of ergonomics in which they are not competent, nor to have characteristics or capabilities which they do not possess.
5. They shall take all reasonable steps to ensure that their qualifications, capabilities or views are not misrepresented by others, and to correct any such misrepresentations of which they become aware.
6. If required to provide services outside their personal competence, or if they consider that services of such nature are appropriate, they shall give every reasonable assistance towards obtaining such services from those qualified to provide them.
7. They shall refrain from making misleading, exaggerated or unjustified claims for the effectiveness of their methods, and they shall not advertise services in a way likely to encourage unrealistic expectations about the effectiveness and results of those services.
8. They shall take all reasonable steps to ensure that those working under their supervision act in concordance with this Code of Professional Conduct.
9. They shall take all reasonable steps to preserve the confidentiality of information acquired through their professional practice or research, and to protect the privacy of individuals or organisations about whom information is collected or held. Subject to the requirements of the law they shall prevent the identity of individuals or organisations being revealed without their expressed permission. When working in a team or with collaborators, they should inform recipients of services or participants in research of the extent to which personally identifiable information may be shared between colleagues, and will ensure as far as lies within their powers that those with whom they are working will respect the confidentiality of the information.
10. With the exception of recordings of public behaviour, they shall make sound or visual recordings of services or participants in research only with the expressed agreement of the individuals or their representatives both to the recording being made and to the subsequent conditions of access to and use of the recordings.
11. They shall conduct themselves in their professional activities in ways which do not damage the interests of the recipients of their services or participants in their research and which do not undermine public confidence in their ability to perform their professional duties.
12. Where they have a direct or indirect interest in a product or service, which may or may not be apparent to a recipient of a product or service, they shall ensure that recipients are fully apprised of any such arrangements where they are in any way relevant to the discussions in hand.
13. They shall neither solicit nor accept from those receiving their services any significant financial or material benefit beyond that which has been contractually agreed, nor shall they accept any benefits from more than one source for the same work without the consent of all the parties concerned.
14. They shall not allow their professional responsibilities or standards of practice to be diminished by considerations of religion, gender, race, age, nationality, class, politics or extraneous factors.
15. Where they become aware of professional misconduct by another member that is not resolved by discussion with the member concerned, they shall take steps to bring that misconduct to the attention of the Registrar of the Institute, doing so without malice.

Read about the Institute’s Disciplinary Procedure. For this see page 20 of the CIEHF’s Charter Documents.