The remarkable development and success of (international) commercial arbitration over the past sixty years have been accompanied by a surge of players and by an alteration in arbitrators’ ethos, translating into misbehaviours and inefficiency which have caused ethical concerns to move to the forefront of doctrinal debates. Based on the minimalistic approach of legislators, professional institutions and arbitration centres have attempted to address some of the issues raised by commercial arbitration users. The ensuing normative inflation has added up to the confusion, rather than assuaging users’ legitimate expectations for probity, competency and efficiency that seem no longer to be arbitration’s trademark. Restoring confidence in a dispute settlement mechanism, theoretically most suited to the needs of economic actors, requires the voluntary adoption and implementation of a coherent deontological corpus, in the interest of users, arbitrators and commercial arbitration itself.