Importance of Ethics
among the IT professionals
Abstract
As a whole world going
through the process of globalization, from different aspects of life and social
and professional requirements the proper behavior of a person comes to the top
places. What do we understand under the word “proper”? Even from the old times
people or the society as a whole has been paying a big attention on how and why
certain man should deal within his environment. And all of that rules are not
under laws or constitution, which are dictated by government or judges. The
good and right behavior of a person in different situations derives from his moral
or society ethics. The paper describes the term ethic and discusses important
of ethics in the professional environment, especially in Information
Technologies field.
Introduction
Technology today allows doing things that were considered
impossible few years ago. Data in large volumes can be processed and passed to
another place over the world in few minutes. Giant data warehouses store data
about everything, including confidential data about finance, politicians. This
rapid development in computer technology has increased the risk of misuse of
technology. We can always read the news on the bad impacts of technology such
as a cardholder’s personal account been hacked and illegal music, movie,
software downloads. The common issues faced by the social today are mostly security
and privacy concerned. As technology has a significant impact to the world,
this impact may be either positive or negative. Which type of impact it will
cause depends on people developing this technology. Therefore, being a responsible ethical IT
professional is important.
First of
all, let us understand these two words, ethics and professionals.The term
“ethics” is originated from a Greek word “ethos” which means character.Ethics
can be defined as a set of rules or standards governing the behavior of a
person or members of a profession.What is profession? According to George
W. Reynolds (2009), “a profession is a
calling that requires specialized knowledge and often long and intensive
academic preparation”. In another word, people can be considered as professionals
if they undergo some experiences and training, practicejudgment in their
working environment and their works are not standardized.
Literature Review
Each
field has its own settled rules of ethics. For example, doctors shall abide the
rule of patient’s confidentiality, engineers shall hold paramount the safety,
health, and welfare of the public (NSPE, 2006). IT professionals also have
their own Code of Conduct. Professional societies and
institutions are setting standards for professions in order to standardize
their behavior in different situation. Big organizations like the ACM, the IEEE
(Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers), and the British Computer
Society set the code of professional conduct where they consider behavior of
professionals from different sides of social issues. According to this Code of
Ethics there are eight principles which should be adhered by IT professions.
These principles describe the way how professions should behave with public,
client, employee, and colleague, as well as do product, judgment, management,
and self – principles in order to act as a profession (Gotterbarn, 1999). According to this Code IT professionals
should understand that their job requires not only possessing technical skills
but also behaving in ethical and morally responsible way in order to be respectful
professional. There is a set of rules which are forbidden by laws. For
instance, plagiarism, spread of viruses, downloading and uploading pirate audio
or video, and many others. Different countries punish these violates
differently, for example, violation of privacy in India is punished with
imprisonment which may extend to three years, cyber terrorism shall be
punishable with imprisonment which may extend to imprisonment for life
(cyberlawsindia.net, 2008). But we are not discussing the issues of legality.
Our paper considers kind of behavior which are not bound by law but more by
ethics. For example, IT professional should respect confidentiality of clients
and ensure that intellectual property of his clients is protected, should not
misuse a computer and knowingly accept a work that is not in his competence
even if it is not punished by law. Behavior that is illegal always considered
as unethical, but there are behaviors that are legal but still considered
unethical. Only those who follow all legal and ethical rules can be called respectful
IT professionals (Feldt, Dodig-Crnkovic, 2008).
In professional lives, people
encounter with different types of dilemmas. For example, participation in the development
of nuclear systems and weapons . Some people strongly refuse to work on kind of
systems related with military. But others can accept it as they think that
national security is more important. Answers, reactions to these questions are
important because consequences of these situations can lead to potential
damages. Another example in working environment is when you cannot deliver a
product on time to the client because of defects and some components of product
need to be modified and checked out again. But your manager is requiring you to
deliver it anyway because he does not want to lose money. The dilemma here is
that if you follow the order of your manager, the product later will damage the
system of your customer. But if you do not follow and tell about defects to
customer, you will violate the rule of keeping competence of your employer. When
facing with such ethical dilemmas, Sommerville (2011) advices “tomake up your
own mind”, listen for your intuition. Also while applying rules of Conduct you
should keep in mind particular individuals and the nature of disagreement.
Because each case is unique and not all possible situations are predefined in
this Code.
From what is discussed above, why is it important to adhere to ethical
standards in IT? First, IT is not just concerned with the development of
innovative technologies, systems, and applications. It requires communication
between IT personnel on one side and customers on another side in order to
develop it. For example, programmer has to communicate with his clients to
identify system requirements in order to deliver acceptable system. Ethics
promote the values for good communication, such as mutual respect, trust, and
fair work. Second, IT usually involves different professionals from different
spheres, especially in groups developing big systems. Ethical standards may
provide values for cooperation and collaboration in healthy work environment.
Conclusion
If summarize, ethics is one of the important side of
human being at any time and place. General rules and principles of ethics take
place in many situations, in the everyday life as well as in the professional
environment. The main essential is how you would behave in such situation, will
be indicator of your social status, level of respect and professional concern.
As discussed in this paper above, professional ethic plays important role in IT
sphere too. In the time of today’s
globalization, when simple computer is getting one of the integral part of
almost all people, the terms ethics in IT, intellectual property, virtual
communication etc. come to first place. Therefore IT professionals have to know
how to deal not only with machines, but with rapid developing society and its
components. Any IT professional should take responsibility on harmful and
illegal actions on the Internet and attempt to protect other Internet users and
owners of the intellectual property.
Refernces:
Cyber Law in India. 2008. Retrieved 23, June 2012 from http://www.cyberlawsindia.net/cyber-india.html
Curricula. Retrieved June 22, 2012 from http://mdh.academia.edu/GordanaDodigCrnkovic/Papers/1050522/Professional_and_Ethical_Issues_of_Software_Engineering_Curricula
Feldt, R., Dodig-Crnkovic, G. (2008). Professional and Ethical issues of Software Engineering. Pearson Education.
Gotterbarn, D., Miller, K. and Rogerson, S. (1999). Software Engineering Code of Ethics. Approved. Comm. ACM, 42(10), 102-7.
National Society of Professional Engineers (2006). Code of Ethics for Engineers. Retrieved June 22, 2012 from http://www.onlineethics.org/Resources/ethcodes/EnglishCodes/9972.aspx
Reynolds, G.W. (2009). “Ethics in Information Technology”, 3rd Edition, Couse Technology,
Cengage Learning. Retrieved June 21, 2012 from http://books.google.com.my/books?id=xZhwj4VjHfkC&source=gbs_navlinks_s
Sommerville, I. (2011). Software Engineering, 9th edition. Pearson Education.
