Ethics and Professionalism in Financial Advice

Running head: ETHICS AND PROFESSIONALISM IN FINANCIAL ADVICE
Ethics and Professionalism in Financial Advice
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author’s Note

1ETHICS AND PROFESSIONALISM IN FINANCIAL ADVICE
Table of Contents
Section 1..........................................................................................................................................2
Answer to Question 1..................................................................................................................2
Answer to Question 2..................................................................................................................2
Section 2..........................................................................................................................................3
Answer to Question 3..................................................................................................................3
Answer to Question 4..................................................................................................................3
Answer to Question 5..................................................................................................................4
Section 3..........................................................................................................................................4
Answer to Question 6..................................................................................................................4
Answer to Question 7..................................................................................................................5
Section 4..........................................................................................................................................6
Answer to Question 8..................................................................................................................6
Answer to Question 9..................................................................................................................6
References........................................................................................................................................8

2ETHICS AND PROFESSIONALISM IN FINANCIAL ADVICE
Section 1
Answer to Question 1
Key ethical issues can come up at the time of the fact-finding process when an advisor is
meeting for the first time with the client. For example, an advisor has to view and review the
sensitive and crucial information of the client. The advisor is needed to protect this crucial and
sensitive information in order to ensure the confidentially, security and privacy of these with
which the client has entrusted him/her. This is considered as an ethical dilemma because this
sensitive and confidential information may have importance to any third party and the financial
advisor can get financial or non-financial benefits from disclosing this information to those third
parties. In order to avoid this ethical dilemma, the advisor needs to comply with the
‘Confidentiality’ principle of Code of Professional Conduct. According to this principle, an
advisor must not disclose any information of the client obtained at the fact-finding process to any
third party unless the advisor has the legal duty to do so (Frumento and Korenman 2013, pp.32-
41).
Answer to Question 2
There are certain steps that can be taken during the fact-finding process for the prevention
of ethical blindness and these are mentioned below:
1. Ethical blindness can be prevented by not setting goals and incentives in order to promote
desired behavior which can lead to negative behavior of the advisor.
2. This can also be prevented by eliminating the act to overlook other’s ethical behavior
when it is the interest of the advisor to remain ignorant.