Professional Development (300578)
Lecture 4 – Ethics and Professional Conduct
Ethics and Professional Conduct
Session 1 2021
Professional Development (300578)
Lecture 4 – Ethics and Professional Conduct
Outline
• What is a professional • Is IT a profession
• Professional Ethics
• Professional Relationships
• What are Ethics and why do we need them • Difference between ethics and law
• Considering codes of ethics
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Professional Development (300578)
Lecture 4 – Ethics and Professional Conduct
Week 2 – Lecture 4 – Module 1 – Ethics and Professional Conduct
Reference Material
• Ethics in ICT: An Australian Perspective, Pearson Education Ed. Donald McDermid
• Specifically Chapters 2, 11 and Appendices
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So what is a professional?
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What defines a professional?
• A profession is an occupation • Requires special knowledge
• Requires special skills
• Requires formal education processes • Provides a service to the community
• A professional provides a service in exchange for payment in accordance with established protocols or licensing, ethics, procedures, standards of service and training/certification – Wikipedia
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Is IT a profession
• Yes – not matured
• Compared to architecture or medicine it is new
• All the elements of professional behavior exists
• Needs understanding and implementing code of conduct
• Promotion and awareness of such code of conduct. (Promote it)
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What are morals?
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Morals
• What we think of as right or wrong, good or bad
• It is subjective; changes with our own background • May not have corresponding materialistic rewards
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What are ethics?
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Ethical
• Actions according to morals
• Obviously subjective
• Inner growth, satisfaction & clear conscience appear to be the major rewards
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What is Legal?
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Legal
• Ethics agreed upon by ‘our’ society • And imposed/enforced by law
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Professional Ethics
• Professions Australia (http://www.professions.com.au/ (previously the Australian Council of Professions))
• Stipulates what professionalism means for the societies it accredits
• Recognised members of the Australian Computer Society (ACS) as professionals in 2000 (gave ICT practitioners recognition as professionals, alongside doctors, lawyers, engineers and others)
• A key requirement is that accredited societies have a Code of Ethics. Some IT-specific Codes of Ethics can be found at:
• IEEE (https://www.ieee.org/index.html), ACS (https://www.acs.org.au/), ACM (http://www.acm.org/), BCS (http://www.bcs.org/category/1)
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Lecture 4 – Ethics and Professional Conduct
Is there a need?
• Vital to profession
• All levels, individual, group and society
• Creates trust and confidence in the profession
• Highly satisfying to have the recognition
• Some IT specific code of ethics • IEEE, ACM, ACS, BCS
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Lecture 4 – Ethics and Professional Conduct
The European Union has fined Microsoft $A712 million for breaking a pledge to offer personal computer users a choice of internet browsers when they install the company’s flagship Windows operating system
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Lecture 4 – Ethics and Professional Conduct
Purpose of Codes of a Professional
• To set a framework that defines acceptable levels of behaviour
• Without codes (Code of Ethics/Code of Conduct) there would be no baseline of expected behaviour
“A man without ethics is a wild beast loosed upon this world”
Albert Camus Nobel Prize Winner Existentialist Philosopher
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Lecture 4 – Ethics and Professional Conduct
Professional Codes
• describe acceptable and unacceptable professional behaviours;
• assist people new to the profession to understand what is expected of
them;
• defines expectations of a member of the profession for the general public;
• provide an agreed viewpoint. In other words sets the standard of behaviour of a professional;
• provides a means of ensuring compliance with the professional code of conduct; and
• provides a means to resolve conflicts between work and personal beliefs. (Burmeister 2000)
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Lecture 4 – Ethics and Professional Conduct
So, what are Ethics?
• Guidelines within which we have choices
• A philosophical approach to how we ought to behave
Code of Conduct = Rules of the road
Ethics = Lines on the road
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Ethics in the workplace
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0mUxMpMTT28
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Separating Ethics from Legal
• Morals (subjective)
• What we think of as right or wrong (our belief system) • Rewards may not be materialistic
• Ethics (subjective)
• Actions according to morals
• Rewards may be inner growth, satisfaction and clear conscience
• Legal (objective)
• Rules and guidelines enforced through social institutions to govern behaviour
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Where does you behaviour fit?
• An interesting paradigm
• Not everyone has the same belief
system
• What’s unethical for you may not
be for someone else
• What’s illegal in one country may
not be in another
• Can you accommodate different values without compromising your own?
Legal/Unethical
Legal/Ethical
Illegal/Unethical
Illegal/Ethical
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Legal/Unethical?
Legal/Unethical Legal/Ethical
Illegal/Unethical Illegal/Ethical
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Legal/Unethical?
• Sacking staff fulltime and offering their jobs back at a lower contract rate
Legal/Unethical
Legal/Ethical
Illegal/Unethical
Illegal/Ethical
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Illegal/Unethical?
Legal/Unethical Legal/Ethical
Illegal/Unethical Illegal/Ethical
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Illegal/Unethical?
• Should be very familiar… plagiarism
Legal/Unethical
Legal/Ethical
Illegal/Unethical
Illegal/Ethical
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Illegal/Ethical?
Legal/Unethical Legal/Ethical
Illegal/Unethical Illegal/Ethical
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Illegal/Ethical?
• Providing prescription medication when they’re having a medical episode.
Legal/Unethical
Legal/Ethical
Illegal/Unethical
Illegal/Ethical
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legal/Ethical?
Legal/Unethical Legal/Ethical
Illegal/Unethical Illegal/Ethical
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legal/Ethical?
• Effectively everything else that does not fall into one of the other categories.
Legal/Unethical
Legal/Ethical
Illegal/Unethical
Illegal/Ethical
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Lecture 4 – Ethics and Professional Conduct
Making Ethical Decisions • The Mum test
• Would you tell your mother what you did? (family values) • The Media test
• How would you feel if what you did was made public? (public perception) • The Smell test
• Does the situation smell right? (sixth sense, intuition)
• The Other Person’s Shoes test
• What if the roles were reversed? (individual values)
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Universal Ethics
• To foster truth
• To act with integrity
• To be truthful
• To do justice
• To act with kindness and generosity • To work towards self-improvement
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_code_(ethics) http://www.danielbranch.com/the-difference-between-being-honest-the-truth-and-lies/
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Shortcomings of codes
• No legal system can be a complete or correct guide to moral behaviour (to act with integrity)
• Codes are static. The environment in which they are applied is dynamic, especially IT
• In the IT industry, adherence to codes is voluntary
• Without formal monitoring of compliance, penal elements are difficult to implement
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Gotterbarn’s Solution
• Professional codes should have three distinct functions:
• Code of Ethics (aspirational)
• Code of Conduct (address attitudes and
behaviours)
• Codes of Practice (address operational activities)
• All three codes may exist in a workplace
Search “Gotterbarn’s Solution” for wider reading
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Well Known Codes for ICT
• Australian Computer Society (ACS) (http://www.acs.org.au/index.cfm?action=show&conID=coe) • Code of Ethics
• Code of Professional Conduct and Professional Practice
• •
Association of Computer Machinery (ACM) (http://www.acm.org/constitution/code) • Code of Ethics and Professional Conduct
ACM/IEEE-CS Joint Task Force on Software Engineering Ethics and
Professional Practices (http://www.acm.org/serving/se/code.htm)
• Software Engineering Code of Ethics and Professional Practice
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Ethical Theories
• Relativism (Spinoza 1632-1677)
• There are no universal moral norms
• The issue of right and wrong is all relative
• Consequentialism (J S Mill 1806-1873)
• Right or wrong depends on its consequence
• The greatest happiness to the greatest number of people
• Deontologism (Kant 1724-1804)
• Right or wrong is the intrinsic character of an act • Wrong is always wrong, right is always right
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IT Professional’s Relationships
The role of codes of conduct in them
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Ethics and Relationships
Your organisation
Users
Computing profession Competitors
ACP
ACS
Employer
Client/sponsor Colleagues
Your team
Unions
Church/clubs
Family
Contractors/consultants
Friends
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IT Professional Relationships
• IT Professionals are involved in a range of relationships: • Employer
• Client
• User
• Supplier
• Professional • Society
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Professional – Employer
• This is the most complex relationship but the most regulated • Why?
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Lecture 4 – Ethics and Professional Conduct
Professional – Employer
• This is the most complex relationship but the most regulated • Why?
• Professionals set the standard of appropriate behavior in the workplace
• Issues include confidentiality, software privacy, maintaining trade secrets.
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Professional – Client
• A professional provides a service to a client for which the client provides compensation
• The client provides the overall direction, the professional provides the expertise
• The professional has a responsibility to act in the best interests of the client
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Lecture 4 – Ethics and Professional Conduct
Professional – User
• Users are those who use the hardware and software
• The professional must understand user requirements in order to
deliver appropriate solutions
• The professional must set the standard and boundaries of what is acceptable behaviour with respect to use of organisational IT resources.
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Professional – Supplier
• Professionals require good relationships with suppliers
• The professional should employ fair dealing practices
• Negotiations are expected, but aggressive or unethical behaviour towards suppliers is not.
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Professional – Professional
• Loyalty between professionals is in the interest of the profession as a whole
• Perceptions of an individual reflect on the profession
• Expectations may include mentoring and support of junior members
• Loyalty without discretion may lead to conflicts of interest
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Professional – Society
• Professionals have a responsibility to ensure their products and services meet established standards of safety
• Professional societies have a responsibility to establish and maintain professional standards
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Example of Code
• Sample code of conduct training video
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bo5TXYaIeUM
• Being Professional at work
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QphclWBVzGQ
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Codes of Conduct
Well Known Examples: ACS, ACM, IEEE
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Australian Computer Society
Code of Ethics
www.acs.org.au
Appendix A and B (D. McDermid)
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4 Honesty and Commitment
4.1 To uphold and advance the honour, dignity and effectiveness of the profession of information technology and in keeping with high standards of competence and ethical conduct, a member must:
a) be honest, forthright and impartial, and
b) loyally serve the community, and
c) strive to increase the competence and prestige of the profession, and
d) use special knowledge and skill for the advancement of human welfare
4.2 The personal commitments set out in NR1.3 and NR1.4 bind each member with regard to that member’s professional conduct.
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4.3 Values and Ideals
4.3.1 Priorities: I must place the interests of the community above those of personal or sectional
interests.
4.3.2 Competence: I must work competently and diligently for my clients and employers.
4.3.3 Honesty: I must be honest in my representations of skills, knowledge, services and products.
4.3.4 Social Implications: I must strive to enhance the quality of life of those affected by my work.
4.3.5 Professional Development: I must enhance my own professional development, and that of my colleagues, employees and students.
4.3.6 Information Technology Profession: I must enhance the integrity of the information technology profession and the respect of its members for each other.
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4.5 Priorities – In accordance with NR1.3.1
4.5.1 I must endeavour to preserve continuity of information technology services and information flow in
my care.
4.5.2 I must endeavour to preserve the integrity and security of the information of others.
4.5.3 I must respect the proprietary nature of the information of others.
4.5.4 I must endeavour to preserve the confidentiality of the information of others.
4.5.5 I must advise my client or employer of any potential conflicts of interest between my assignment and legal or other accepted community requirements.
4.5.6 I must advise my clients and employers as soon as possible of any conflicts of interest or conscientious objections which face me in connection with my work.
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4.6 Competence – In accordance with NR1.3.2
4.6.1 I must endeavour to provide products and services, which match the operational and financial
needs of my clients and employers.
4.6.2 I must give value for money in the services and products I supply.
4.6.3 I must make myself aware of relevant standards, and act accordingly.
4.6.4 I must respect and protect my clients’ and employers’ proprietary interests.
4.6.5 I must accept responsibility for my work.
4.6.6 I must advise my clients and employers when I believe a proposed project is not in their best interest.
4.6.7 I must go beyond my brief, if necessary, in order to act professionally.
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4.7 Honesty – In accordance with NR1.3.3
4.7.1 I must not knowingly mislead a client or potential client as to the suitability of a product or service.
4.7.2 I must not misrepresent my skills or knowledge.
4.7.3 I must give opinions which are as far as possible unbiased and objective.
4.7.4 I must give realistic estimates for projects under my control.
4.7.5 I must qualify professional opinions, which I know are based on limited knowledge or experience.
4.7.6 I must give credit for work done by others where credit is due.
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4.8 Social Implications – In accordance with NR1.3.4
4.8.1 I must protect and promote the health and safety of those affected by my work.
4.8.2 I must consider and respect people’s privacy, which might be affected by my work.
4.8.3 I must respect my employees and refrain from treating them unfairly.
4.8.4 I must endeavour to understand, and give due regard to, the perceptions of those affected by my work.
4.8.5 I must attempt to increase the feelings of personal satisfaction, competence, and control of those affected by my work.
4.8.6 I must not require, or attempt to influence, any person to take any action, which would involve a breach of the Code of Ethics.
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4.9 Professional Development – In accordance with NR1.3.5
4.9.1 I must continue to upgrade my knowledge and skills.
4.9.2 I must increase my awareness of issues affecting the information technology profession and its relationship with the community.
4.9.3 I must encourage my colleagues, employees and students to continue their own professional development.
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4.10 Information Technology Profession – In accordance with NR1.3.6 4.10.1 I must respect, and seek when necessary, the professional opinions of colleagues in their areas of
competence.
4.10.2 I must not knowingly engage in, or be associated with, dishonest or fraudulent practices. 4.10.3 I must not attempt to enhance my own reputation at the expense of another’s reputation.
4.10.4 I must co-operate in advancing information processing by communication with other professionals, students and the public, and by contributing to the efforts of professional and scientific societies and schools.
4.10.5 I must distance myself professionally from someone whose membership of the Society has been terminated because of unethical behaviour or unsatisfactory conduct.
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4.10 Information Technology Profession – In accordance with NR1.3.6 4.10.6 I must take appropriate action if I discover a member, or a person who could potentially be a
member, of the Society engaging in unethical behaviour.
4.10.7 I must seek advice from the Society when faced with an ethical dilemma I am unable to resolve by myself.
4.10.8 I must do what I can to ensure that the corporate actions of the Society are in accordance with this Code of Ethics.
4.10.9 I acknowledge my debt to the computing profession and in return must protect and promote professionalism in information technology.
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Software Engineering Code Of Ethics & Professional Practice
Recommended by the IEEE-CS/ACM Joint
Task Force
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1 PUBLIC – Software engineers shall act consistently with the public interest.
2 CLIENT & EMPLOYER – Software engineers shall act in a manner that is in the best interests of their client and employer and that is consistent with the public interest.
3 PRODUCT – Software engineers shall ensure that their products and related modifications meet the highest professional standards possible.
4 JUDGMENT – Software engineers shall maintain integrity and independence in their professional judgment.
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5 MANAGEMENT – Software engineering managers and leaders shall subscribe to and promote an ethical approach to the management of software development and maintenance.
6 PROFESSION – Software engineers shall advance the integrity and reputation of the profession consistent with the public interest.
7 COLLEAGUES – Software engineers shall be fair to and supportive of their colleagues.
8 SELF – Software engineers shall participate in lifelong learning regarding the practice of their profession and promote an ethical approach to the practice of the profession.
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Association of Computing Machinery Code Of Ethics
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1 General Moral Imperatives AsanACMmemberIwill…
1.1 Contribute to society and human well-being
1.2 Avoid harm to others
1.3 Be honest and trustworthy
1.4 Be fair and take action not to discriminate
1.5 Honour property rights including copyrights and patents
1.6 Give proper credit for intellectual property
1.7 Respect the privacy of others
1.8 Honour Confidentiality
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2 More Specific Professional Responsibilities
AsanACMmemberIwill…
2.1 Strive to achieve the highest quality, effectiveness and dignity in both the process and
products of professional work
2.2 Acquire and maintain professional competence
2.3 Know and respect existing laws pertaining to professional work
2.4 Accept and provide appropriate professional review
2.5 Give comprehensive and thorough evaluations of computer systems and their impacts, including analysis of possible risks
2.6 Honour contracts, agreements, and assigned responsibilities
2.7 Improve public understanding of computing and its consequences
2.8 Access computing and communication resources only when authorized to do so
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3 Organisational Leadership Imperatives
As an ACM member and an organizational leader, I will . . .
3.1 Articulate social responsibilities of members of an organizational unit and encourage full acceptance of those responsibilities
3.2 Manage personnel and resources to design and build information systems that enhance the quality of working life
3.3 Acknowledge and support proper and authorized uses of an organization’s computing and communications resources
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3 Organizational Leadership Imperatives
As an ACM member and an organizational leader, I will . . .
3.4 Ensure that users and those who will be affected by a system have their needs clearly articulated during the assessment and design of requirements. Later the system must be validated to meet requirements
3.5 Articulate and support policies that protect the dignity of users and others affected by a computing system
3.6 Create opportunities for members of the organization to learn the principles and limitations of computer systems
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4 Compliance with the Code AsanACMmemberIwill…
4.1 Uphold and promote the principles of this Code
4.2 Treat violations of this code as inconsistent with membership in the ACM
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Moral responsibilities, legal liability and accountability
• Responsibilityhasassociatedwithittheabilitytolayblameforactionorinaction
• Liabilityisalegaltermimplyingcompensationforharmthroughactionorinaction
• Accountabilitymeansthatanindividual,groupororganisationisanswerablefortheir
actions or inactions
• Liabilityoffersasolution,inpart,tovictimsevenifidentificationofthoseaccountableis not possible
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Summary
• Professional codes of conduct and practice set a standard for a profession
• Codes of conduct are guidelines, not a substitute for sound moral reasoning or judgement, or justification of an illegal act
• Ethical decision making is a crucial element of a professional – separate from legality
• Codes can be contradictory
• Personal ethical and moral judgement is essential
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Readings
• Chapter The Study of Ethics – (McDermid)
• Chapter Professional Ethics and Responsibilities – (McDermid)
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Questions?
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