The article analyses the code of ethics as an instrument for maintaining the principles of professional ethics of university professors and as the way to prevent the base ethical issues faced by university professors. It is necessary to highlight the following base principles of professional ethics. Firstly, professional duty outweighs material interests. It means that a professor has to do his job even for a low fee and always focuses on high academic results. Secondly, a professor should conduct a scientific research to be a good scientist and to combine this activity with teaching according to the principle of the Humboldt's university model "the unity of education and research". Thirdly, a professor should strive to improve his professional activity, to learn throughout his life and to acquire computer skills. These principles are not always respected. A. Schopenhauer ("On University Philosophy") wrote that publishing articles and lessons were for many professors a requirement for obtaining positions and material rewards. J. Ortega y Gasset ("Mission of the University") wrote that good scientists were rarely good teachers and treated teaching as a burden. Today this issue remains open. The problem of excessive bureaucratization of the educational process in some universities is also an obstacle for fulfillment the principles of professional ethics and scientific work. We can use the code of ethics to prevent these ethical problems in some cases. The code of ethics of university appears as a mass phenomenon after the codes of commercial corporations and it presents values of business ethics which are now relevant for the academic sphere. These are the competitiveness, the efficiency orientation and the openness to innovation. However, it is not the only idea of the code of ethics that makes it working. Making it active requires a long discussion of the code by all members of a university ("a code is nothing, coding is everything"), informing the academic community about the contents of the code, measures for the promotion and the popularization of professional and corporate ethics and personal example of superiors (heads of departments). It is very important to provide the mechanisms of changing the code "from below" as well as the acceptance of proposals. The code of ethics is often accompanied by an ethical committee: the latter helps to resolve conflicts of interests and other issues of corporate ethics including maintenance of high ideals of professional ethics. It is important for an ethical committee to enjoy the high credibility of university staff, otherwise it risks to get a reputation of "punishing authority", a tool for mere exercising of the administrative power. The ethical committee should consist of various representatives of the university staff, so it will be able to provide not only the observance of rules of corporate ethics, but also the focusing on the principles of professional ethics.