The Canadian Code of Ethics for Psychologists (Canadian Psychological Association, CPA, 2000) has been the subject of several recent investigations. This work has focused, for example, on the validity of its hierarchical organization of ethical principles. In the present research, we subjected the code to both a content and a functional grammar analysis. Our content analysis was aimed at determining the theoretical ethical orientation (i.e., deontological, teleological or caring) of each statement in the document, while the functional grammar analysis provided information about implicit messages embedded within the code. We contrasted the results of our analysis with those of previous work on the code of ethics adopted by the Canadian Medical Association (CMA). We concluded that, compared to CMA's code, the CPA document has greater educational value, is less authoritarian, provides a clear rationale for ethical behaviour, and is more empowering to the decision-maker. We argue that the results of our functional grammar and content analyses have implications for future attempts to improve ethics codes for psychology and other professions.

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