Professionals routinely receive confidential information: proprietary designs, trade secrets, personal data, business plans. The code obliges them to keep client and employer information confidential and not to use it for personal advantage or disclose it without consent.
But confidentiality is not absolute. It yields to the paramount duty to public safety and the protection of the environment, and to disclosure required by law. If continued confidentiality would conceal a serious risk to the public (an unsafe structure, an undisclosed contaminant), the duty to the public prevails, and the professional must act even over the client's objection.
🧠 Memory hook: Confidentiality is the rule; public safety and legal compulsion are the exceptions.
The recommended sequence when confidential information reveals a hazard is: (1) raise the concern internally with the client/employer and try to have it corrected; (2) if unresolved and the public remains at risk, escalate, ultimately to the regulator or appropriate authority, disclosing only what is necessary.
Exam tip: A question pitting "keep the client's secret" against "warn of a danger to the public" is testing paramountcy: public safety wins. But note the process, try internal resolution first; broad public disclosure is a last resort, limited to what is necessary.