Code of Ethics Project - Summary
A summary of the outcomes of the Coffee House project delivered by Dr Joseph Lambert and Sara Robertson in November 2026. This presentation was an adapted version of the presentation given at the 1st International Conference on Ethics and Translation held at the Universidad Complutense de Madrid in October 2026.
Codes of ethics versus codes of conduct
A key distinction was established at the start of the project. In translation and interpreting, the terms 'codes of ethics' and 'codes of conduct' are often used interchangeably, but Joseph and Sara chose to approach them as two very different documents. A code of ethics sits at a higher level, articulating the bigger picture, vision, and philosophy of an institution to guide members' and employees' decision-making. A code of conduct is more tightly defined and applied locally, setting out agreed behaviours of employees or members within an association. The Institute of Translation and Interpreting (ITI) has a Code of Professional Conduct, but currently not a code of ethics. The project began with a conversation about what could be done at the wider ethical level.
Across the profession, many codes of conduct or ethics share common problems. They often do not cover all topics deemed to be relevant, particularly today when ethical issues are developing rapidly and the industry has changed massively in recent years. Enforcement has become challenging; although many codes have been in place for decades, they are in many cases toothless with very few instances of actual enforcement. Interpreting what codes ask for and applying their ideas in practice presents ongoing difficulties.
Many codes have also remained static for years. The ITI code is updated from time to time, though recent changes have been quite limited. Many other association’s codes are not reviewed at all. Because they have not been changed, many guidelines have become outdated. Additionally, many codes are very prescriptive, quite long and not particularly user friendly.
Drivers for change
The desire to address these challenges led to thinking about how to address contemporary ethical issues and emerging concerns such as environmental sustainability, professional wellbeing, and the use of technology, particularly artificial intelligence, in translation and interpreting. However, updating codes is a very time-consuming and hotly debated process due to the complexity of these issues and the very different viewpoints within associations. These documents sit across practice types and across both translation and interpreting, meaning they must attempt to satisfy a variety of needs and use cases.
Earlier work by Joseph had explored whether a code is the best way of enshrining ethical issues in the profession, or whether alternative formats might work better. The Coffee House sessions emerged as a way to work towards creating flexible, evolving resources rather than sticking rigidly to static guidelines.
The origin of the Coffee House sessions
When Sara joined ITI two and a half years ago, one of the notes in her handover from her predecessor Paul Wilson included a note saying, 'do something about ethics', with a suggestion to speak to Joseph Lambert. In their early conversation about how to approach a discussion of ethics, the pair came up with the idea of setting up conversations that involved members and made the effort wider and more collaborative.
The name 'coffee house' drew inspiration from Sara's heritage background. Coffee houses prevalent in London and elsewhere in the eighteenth century and were places of conversation where people came together to learn the news of the day, meet other people and discuss matters of mutual concern. This seemed like a good model for the project because ethics are not owned by academics or individuals; they should be owned collectively by a group of professionals. The concept also provided what Sara described as a 'catchy hook', which was quite different from conventional approaches.
Co-creation and partnership
The project was centred on genuine collaboration and a creating partnership of equals. However, it was also an organic process. While there was a framework in mind at the beginning, the programme was fully worked out at the beginning. The team kicked off the first few sessions without entirely knowing how many sessions there would ultimately be, or how the series would unfold.
One significant advantage was the ability to benefit from existing academic networks. Joseph knew people working in the field, and those people knew others, which quickly generated a cohort of receptive and like-minded contributors. An early commitment was made to share thinking as the work progressed, rather than keeping it confidential until final publication. This meant being very open about saying 'this is what people said', 'this is what they thought' and 'these are the ideas that came out'. The materials produced as outputs (available on the ITI website) are genuine reflections of what participants said in the sessions.
How the sessions worked
Sara and Joseph hosted a series of lunchtime sessions across 2024 and the first half of 2025, all held online on Zoom. Each session combined a brief presentation from expert contributors with practitioner-led dialogue in breakout rooms. The informal format was designed to encourage free-flowing conversation and to enable people to relax and participate.
One successful innovation was the mechanism for capturing what people were saying. Because it wasn’t possible to have facilitators in every breakout room, responsibility for making notes was given to the participants. Each breakout room was given a link to a section on a Padlet board and very firm instructions to write ideas down. Participants understood that if an important point was not captured on the Padlet board, it might not be captured at all and could be lost. Participants responded very positively to these instructions.
The team took the Padlet responses and the transcript of the plenary discussion from the end of each event and used AI tools to produce summaries of each session. All of these materials are now published on the website.
The Coffee House session in numbers
Across the 12 sessions in the series, there were nearly 600 registrations, an average of about 50 per session. This translated to 297 actual attendees, an average of just under 25 per session. Attendee numbers remained fairly consistent across the 12 sessions rather than starting with high participation and declining.
The gap between registrations and attendances is revealing but not unusual for online ITI events. It points to the fact that more people were interested in the sessions than could actually find time to attend. Finding the time to fit in 12 sessions is no easy feat for busy professionals.
Interestingly, one person registered for 11 sessions but did not attend any live session, instead following all the content asynchronously. Notably, 37 people attended four or more sessions, showing there was a broad interest from many people, though the numbers increased significantly to 286 people attending just one or two sessions.
An important finding was that there was almost an even split between ITI members and non-members. This was encouraging as the team had made a conscious decision to open up the discussions beyond just ITI members at the beginning and hoped to gain insights from people not affiliated with ITI. This approach proved successful.
Topic trends
There were very clear spikes in topics that particularly interested people. The best attended session was the opening event which attracted 90 people; this was expected for a new series. This was followed by the environmental sustainability session, and the platform economy challenges session.
Beyond those three most popular sessions, wellbeing emerged as a key concern, which was perhaps unsurprising given its growing attention in academic circles and among colleagues interested in discussing these issues. Unsurprisingly, technology and artificial intelligence also generated significant interest.
Positive outcomes
A substantial amount of material has been generated through the project. A new section of the ITI website, called 'Exploring ethics', was created specifically to host all of this material in a consistent fashion. The online report has “chapters” for each session; these comprise an introduction, the recording and slides from the session, and the summary of the discussion. Making the material freely available allows people who missed sessions to go back and review what was covered on a particular topic.
In addition to the online resources, Joseph wrote an article for the ITI Bulletin, and the team presented the project at a conference in Madrid in October.
One unexpected additional positive outcome was the emergence of spin-off projects. JC Penet, an ITI board member, volunteered to set up a longer form workshop course looking at wellbeing. This is supported by another new section on the ITI website focussed on wellbeing where people have been sharing practical tips on what works for them. This demonstrates the organic way ideas have continued to develop from the project.
The discussions about ethics also informed the formulation of the revised Code of Professional Conduct, which was approved at the AGM. The new code is now available on the ITI website. It is important to emphasise the relationship between the ethical discussions and the Code of Professional Conduct; the learning from the ethical discussions informed the revised code, and the two work streams will now be combined in terms of how ITI approaches developing further guidance.
Reflections on the process
It is fair to say that the process has taken considerably more time than expected. Initial assumptions that running a few events would be enough to generate something concrete were upended by the swift realisation after the first session that the team would need to think carefully about how to break down complex topics into manageable chunks. It became clear that a warming up period was needed and that the pace and the scale of ambition would need to be tailored to the levels of knowledge of the participants. As a result, the work that has been done so far only really scratches the surface of some issues.
Also, topics such as artificial intelligence and environmental sustainability can draw strong and polarised opinions. Sometimes these opinions are hard to reconcile. However, it is important to stress that throughout the sessions everyone has been very respectful and open to different perspectives. But, from the perspective of making concrete changes, strong divergence of opinion can be a stumbling block.
Nevertheless, even though the achievements to date are relatively small-scale, they should be celebrated and acknowledged, particularly thanks to the many people who have participated in the sessions and given their time, energy, efforts, and thoughts in such a thoughtful way.
Joseph also acknowledged the importance of working in close partnership with Sara, who has been able to offer leadership when needed and has also handle the technical elements, with Joseph managing programme planning logistics.
The team also commended the exceptional support that they received from the academic community. Being able to call on genuine experts across a broad range of areas for the sessions has been key to the success of the Coffee House sessions. When Joseph approached people to ask if they would contribute a presentation, they generally agreed. As the project progressed, people began to approach the team to offer to lead sessions on their areas of expertise. This speaks to the genuine interest in ethics across the profession, the industry and academia.
The challenge of engagement
Although the Coffee House sessions generally worked well, with excellent discussions and rich resources produced, the reality of professional engagement with ethics has been “messy.” Nurturing deep engagement on such a complex topic is not straightforward. Professionals are incredibly busy and have limited time to commit. Asking for substantial engagement over a long period is therefore a lot to ask.
So, an issue that was not fully resolved relates to participation and engagement. Ethics and conduct should be important to everyone; they are a fundamental part of being a professional. For this reason, the team’s ambition was to try to engage as many people as possible in the project. However, as Joseph noted, this is not necessarily easy. The reality is that while the project had a good-sized audience of participants to contribute to a constructively challenging discussion, a significant population of ITI members did not take part. The unresolved question is therefore how to find means to engage more members in the conversation in the future.
Next steps
While there was not a planned destination or path at the outset, and improvising worked well within the guiding ethos, the time has come to establish a more formal process. So, in addition to publishing the resources already developed, the team has been thinking about how to create a more tangible long-term change to the way that practitioners think about ethics.
An important commitment will be starting to work on guidance. The team acknowledged during the summer consultation on the Code of Professional Conduct that there is a demand for guidance to accompany the code. There is also a need to translate the ideas from the ethical discussions into practical guidance on the ethical issues. These two pieces of work, although not identical, are clearly overlapping and should now be part of one project. However, the project will require structure and the involvement of members.
To take this forward, the Board has agreed to the establishment of an Ethics and Standards Committee. This would provide the formal leadership needed for this work. Such committees are standard in many professional bodies, where they advise on ethics and related matters. The committee members would not necessarily be those writing the guidance, but they would take ownership of the process – commissioning work and overseeing activities and further discussions. The committee will also be able to solicit further on what has been achieved to date, what has been useful, what has been less useful, and ideas on where the work should move next.
