Professional Ethics in IT.

What is it?

Professional ethics in Information Technology for our purposes refers to the guidelines of conduct and operation for IT professionals. These guidelines determine acceptable relationships and responsibilities toward all stakeholders in IT projects, products and services. They are intended to influence the decisions of IT professionals in order to provide a safe and beneficial environment for all players.

Decisions made by IT professional often have far reaching effects not only on stakeholders such as sponsors, clients, employers and users but also on standards, systems as well as both technical and physical infrastructure. The erroneous coding decision of a computer programmer working on an IT project in Asia may adversely affect millions of systems affected by that code in a widely dispersed geographic area.

Ethical guidelines minimize these adverse effects and stabilize the industry by establishing standards and policies by which IT professionals are expected to be guided. As far as the enforcement of these guidelines is concerned the fact that these guidelines are often not ingrained in law places the onus of implementation into the hands of professional organizations and licensing bodies.

Common ethical issues for IT professionals: Accuracy and Control.

It is very difficult to determine and monitor the accuracy of work done by IT professionals. The problem of inaccurate or substandard work is directly linked to their education and training as well as their moral compass. IT standard operations and best practices are often not emphasized during IT training or education.

Where they are emphasized, other considerations such as remuneration for more lines of code or a larger resource list may override any moral considerations for accuracy in the IT professional’s mind. The result is products and services with potentially serious flaws and even breaches which may adversely affect users, products and services. Controlling such activities is an issue which gives rise to institutional or industrial review boards, and the systems and procedures they would implement.