Abstract

This paper addresses the ethics of confidentiality in the professions, specifically whether it is ever permissible to break a client's confidence to protect third parties at risk of harm. Exceptions built into the confidentiality clauses of most professional codes of ethics suggest that a client's right to privacy sometimes conflicts with the basic rights of others, such as the rights to life and bodily integrity. But I shall argue that this conflict does not provide a sufficient reason to break a client's confidence. Using as my test case the uncooperative HIV-infected client who intends to place third parties at risk of harm, I will examine confidentiality through the lenses of act utilitarianism and Kantianism before settling on what I see as a compromise between these two ethical theories and rule utilitarianism. Although rule utilitarianism allows exceptions to be built into moral rules, my particular view is that there can be no exceptions to an effective rule of confidentiality, where an effective rule is one that facilitates the proper functioning of the profession.