Draft version 1.7 beta — Revised October 26, 2026
← Return to the table in Chapter 4, § 5
Breach of confidentiality
A topic page linked from Chapter 4, § 5, Examples of Reported Violations of Enforceable Ethics Codes.
Definition
Confidential information is meant to be kept secret. As an attorney once told me, "The best way to keep a secret is to not tell anybody."
Employers and clients are presumed to have a significant interest in keeping private information confidential. An organization's private information is a form of property, and the organization has a clear interest in protecting it. That is, the organization has a proprietary interest, which is the source of your professional obligation to keep that information confidential.
Most employment contracts and agreements for contracted work include confidentiality clauses that prohibit disclosing proprietary information to third parties who are not authorized to receive it. Whether you have direct knowledge of all contracts pertaining to your work, you should presume that you have a professional obligation not to disclose any information related to your work (for your employer and clients) to anyone who is not authorized to know it.
ASBOG included failure to maintain confidentiality as one of the 13 ethical issues in its Task Analysis surveys in 2010 and 2015, each of which was completed by a few thousand respondents—professional geoscientists and academics in the United States and Canada.5-7 The results of those surveys indicated that failure to maintain confidentiality was considered a very serious problem.
Relevant provisions in geoethics codes
AAPG – § 3b; AEG – § 2.3, 6.3; AGI – § 1.1; AIPG – § 3.2.1; ASBOG – § 16.6a; CAL – § e; GSA – § 3.1f.
Code Abbreviations
- AAPG — American Association of Petroleum Geologists, AAPG Code of Ethics (2024), Link to current document
- AEG — Association of Environmental and Engineering Geologists, AEG Code of Conduct (2018), Link to current document
- AGI — American Geosciences Institute, AGI Guidelines for Ethical Professional Conduct (2015), Link to current document
- AIPG — American Institute of Professional Geologists, AIPG Code of Ethics (2019), Link to current document
- ASBOG — Association of State Boards of Geology, Model Rules and Regulations, Section 16, Code of Ethics (2019), Link to current document; see pages 27 to 29.
- Cal — Regulations Relating to the Practices of Geology and Geophysics, California Code of Regulations, Title 16, Division 29, Section 3065, Professional Standards and Code of Professional Conduct – Professional Geology and Professional Geophysics (2026), Link to current document; see pages 30 to 33.
- GSA — Geological Society of America, GSA Code of Ethics & Professional Conduct (2023), Link to current document
Notes and References
1 Garner, B.A. [editor], 2024, Black's Law Dictionary [12th edition]: St. Paul, MN, Thompson Reuters, ISBN 979-8-350-29089-9, 2071 p.
2 Warner, J.L., and Warner, S.P., 2010, Task Analysis 2010 – A Study of the Practice of Geology in the United States and Canada: National Association of State Boards of Geology (ASBOG), 75 p., accessed October 24, 2026, via https://asbog.org/documents/ASBOG TAS 2010 - Final Report - June 2010.pdf
3 Warner, J.L., and Warner, S.P., 2010, Task Analysis 2010 – A Study of the Practice of Geology in the United States and Canada: National Association of State Boards of Geology (ASBOG), 75 p., accessed October 24, 2026, via https://asbog.org/documents/ASBOG%20TAS%202010%20-%20Final%20Report%20-%20June%202010.pdf
4 Williams, J., 2018, The National Association of State Boards of Geology (ASBOG): Involvement in Geoscience Professional Ethics, in Gunderson, L.C., [editor], Scientific Integrity and Ethics in the Geosciences: Washington, D.C., American Geophysical Union, ISBN 978-1-119-06778-8, p. 77–99.