Ethics in Information

Technology, Second Edition

Chapter 2
Ethics for IT Professionals and IT
Users
Ethics in Information Technology, Second Edition 1
 Objectives

• What key characteristics distinguish a professional

from other kinds of workers, and what is the role of
an IT professional?

• What relationships must an IT professional manage,

and what key ethical issues can arise in each?

• How do codes of ethics, professional organizations,

certification, and licensing affect the ethical behavior
of IT professionals?
Ethics in Information Technology, Second Edition 2
 Objectives (continued)

• What are the key tenets of four different codes of

ethics that provide guidance for IT professionals?

• What are the common ethical issues that face IT

users?

• What approaches can support the ethical practices

of IT users?

Ethics in Information Technology, Second Edition 3

 IT Professionals
• Profession is a calling that requires
– Specialized knowledge
– Long and intensive academic preparation

Three Criteria that define a professional employee

• Professionals are expected to contribute to society
• keep abreast of developments in their field
• help develop other professionals

• A professional from a legal standpoint

– Has passed the state licensing requirements
– Has earned the right to practice there
Ethics in Information Technology, Second Edition 4
 Are IT Workers Professionals?

• Partial list of IT specialists

– Programmers
– Systems analysts
– Software engineers
– Database administrators
– Local area network (LAN) administrators
– Chief information officers (CIOs)

Ethics in Information Technology, Second Edition 5

 Are IT Workers Professionals?
(continued)
• Legal perspective
– IT workers are not recognized as professionals
– Not licensed
– IT workers are not liable for malpractice

Ethics in Information Technology, Second Edition 6

 Professional Relationships That Must
Be Managed
• IT professionals have many different relationships
with:
– Employers
– Clients
– Suppliers
– Other professionals
– IT users
– Society at large

Ethics in Information Technology, Second Edition 7

 Relationships Between IT
Professionals and Employers
• IT professional must discuss with employer before accepting a
job.
• IT professionals must set an example and enforce policies
regarding the ethical use of IT
• Software piracy is the act of illegally making copies of software
or enabling others to access software to which they are not
entitled
• Software piracy is an area in which IT professionals can be
tempted to violate laws and policies
• The Business Software Alliance (BSA) is a trade group that
represents the world’s largest software and hardware
manufacturers
– Its mission is to stop the unauthorized copying of software
produced by its members
Ethics in Information Technology, Second Edition 8
 Members of Business Software
Alliance (as of July 2005)

Ethics in Information Technology, Second Edition 9

 Relationships Between IT
Professionals and Employers
(continued)
• Trade secret is an
– Information used in business
– Generally unknown to the public
– Company has taken strong measures to keep it
confidential
– Example Design of new software code, hardware
design or business plan.
• Whistle-blowing is an effort to
– Attracts attention to a negligent, illegal, unethical,
abusive, or dangerous act that threatens the public
interest.
Ethics in Information Technology, Second Edition 10
 Relationships Between IT
Professionals and Clients
• IT professional provides
– Hardware, software, or services at a certain cost and
within a given time frame
• Client provides
– Compensation
– Access to key contacts
– Work space
• Relationship is usually documented in contractual
terms

Ethics in Information Technology, Second Edition 11

 Relationships Between IT
Professionals and Clients (continued)
• Ethical problems arise if a company (IT consultants
or auditors) recommends their own products and
services to remedy problems they have detected,
this raises questions about the vendor’s objectivity.

• When IT Professionals are unable to provide full and

accurate reporting of a project’s status, the project
manager may be reluctant to share project information
because of contractual penalties.

Ethics in Information Technology, Second Edition 12

 Legal Overview:
Fraud, Misrepresentation,
and Breach of Contract
• Fraud is a
– Crime of obtaining goods, services, or property
through deception or trickery
– Fraud is proven in court
• Breach of contract
– One party fails to meet the terms of a contract

Ethics in Information Technology, Second Edition 13

 Legal Overview:
Fraud, Misrepresentation, and
Breach of Contract (continued)
• IT projects are joint efforts in which vendors and
customers work together
– Difficult to assign blame

Ethics in Information Technology, Second Edition 14

 Relationships Between IT
Professionals and Suppliers
• Develop good relationships with suppliers
– Deal fairly with them
– Do not make unreasonable demands
• Bribery
– Providing money, property, or favors to someone in
business or government to obtain a business
advantage
– U.S. Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) makes it a
crime to bribe a foreign official, a foreign political party
official, or a candidate for foreign political office

Ethics in Information Technology, Second Edition 15

 Relationships Between IT
Professionals and Suppliers
(continued)
• Bribery
– At what point does a gift become a bribe?
– No gift should be hidden
– Perceptions of donor and recipient can differ

Ethics in Information Technology, Second Edition 16

 Distinguishing Between a Bribe and a
Gift

Ethics in Information Technology, Second Edition 17

 Relationships Between IT
Professionals and Other Professionals
• Professionals owe each other adherence to a
profession’s code of conduct
• Ethical problems between members of the IT
profession
- Résumé inflation involves lying on a résumé to
claim competence in an IT skill that is in high
demand.
– Inappropriate sharing of corporate information

Ethics in Information Technology, Second Edition 18

 Relationships Between IT
Professionals and IT Users
• IT user is a person for whom a hardware or software
product is designed
• IT professionals’ duty
– Understand users’ needs and capabilities
– Deliver products and services that best meet those
needs
– Establish an environment that supports ethical
behavior by users

Ethics in Information Technology, Second Edition 19

 Relationships Between IT
Professionals and Society
Regulatory laws are not sufficient to safeguard against all
negative side effects of a particular product, so IT
professionals have a responsibility to take action to
eliminate potential public risk.

Ethics in Information Technology, Second Edition 20

 The Ethical Behavior of IT
Professionals
• Corporations are taking actions to ensure good
business ethics among employees

Ethics in Information Technology, Second Edition 21

 Professional Codes of Ethics

• A professional code of ethics states the principles

and core values that are essential to the work of a
particular occupational group
• Main parts:
– Outlines what the professional organization aspires to
become
– Lists rules and principles by which members of the
organization are expected to abide

Ethics in Information Technology, Second Edition 22

 Professional Codes of Ethics
(continued)
• Benefits for individual, profession, and society
– Improves ethical decision making
– Promotes high standards of practice and ethical
behavior
– Enhances trust and respect from the general public
– Provides an evaluation benchmark

Ethics in Information Technology, Second Edition 23

 Professional Organizations
• No universal code of ethics for IT professionals
• No single, formal organization of IT professionals has emerged as
pre-eminent
• Four most prominent organizations include:
- Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) founded in 1947
with 24,000 students members and 68,000 professional members
in more than 100 countries. ACM has a special-interest groups that
focus on a variety of IT issues, and each group provides
publications, workshops, and conferences.

- Association of Information Technology Professionals (AITP)

founded in 1996. The mission of the AITP is to provide leadership
and education in information technology, and to help make
members more marketable.
Ethics in Information Technology, Second Edition 24
 Professional Organizations cont.
- Computer Society of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics
Engineers (IEEE-CS) with about 85,000 members. Founded in
1946. IEEE-CS and the ACM formed the Joint Steering
Committee for the Establishment of Software Engineering as a
Profession in 1993. The initial recommendations of the committee
were to define ethical standards and appropriate curricula for
acquiring knowledge.

- Project Management Institute (PMI) founded in 1969 with more

than 150,000 members in 150 countries. PMI has a project
management professional (PMP) certification program which
requires a person to meet education and experience requirement,
agree to follow the PMP Code of Ethics and then pass the PMP
exam.
Ethics in Information Technology, Second Edition 25
 Certification

• Indicates a professional possesses a particular set of skills,

knowledge, or abilities in the opinion of a certifying
organization.
• Can also apply to products
• Generally voluntary
• Carries no requirement to adhere to a code of ethics

Ethics in Information Technology, Second Edition 26

 Certification (continued)

• Vendor certifications
– Some certifications substantially improve IT workers’
salaries and career prospects
– Relevant for narrowly defined roles
• Or certain aspects of broader roles
– Require passing a written exam
– Workers are commonly recertified as newer
technologies become available
– Examples Cisco, IBM Microsoft and Oracle.

Ethics in Information Technology, Second Edition 27

 Certification (continued)

• Industry association certifications

– Require a certain level of experience and a broader
perspective than vendor certifications
– Lag in developing tests that cover new technologies

Ethics in Information Technology, Second Edition 28

 Government Licensing

Generally administered at the state level in the United

States. Some professionals must be licensed,
including certified public accountants (CPAs),
lawyers, doctors.
• Case for licensing IT professionals
– Encourage IT professionals to follow the highest
standards of the profession
– Practice a code of ethics
– Violators would be punished

Ethics in Information Technology, Second Edition 29

 Government Licensing (continued)

• Issues associated with government licensing of IT

professionals
– There are few international or national licensing
programs for IT professionals
– No universally accepted core body of knowledge
– Unclear who should manage content and
administration of licensing exams
– No administrative body to accredit professional
education programs
– No administrative body to assess and ensure
competence of individual professionals
Ethics in Information Technology, Second Edition 30
 IT Professional Malpractice

• Negligence has been defined as not doing

something that a reasonable man would do, or doing
something that a reasonable man would not do
• Duty of care refers to the obligation to protect people
against any unreasonable harm or risk
• Courts consistently reject attempts to sue individual
parties for computer-related malpractice

Ethics in Information Technology, Second Edition 31

 IT Users
Employees’ ethical use of IT is an area of
growing concern as more companies provide
employees with PCs, access to corporate
information systems and data, and the
Internet.

Ethics in Information Technology, Second Edition 32

 Common Ethical Issues for IT Users
• Software piracy
• Inappropriate use of computing resources
• Inappropriate sharing of information
– Private data: includes employee salary, health records and
performance rating.
– Confidential information: such as company sales and
promotion plans, staffing projections and product formulas

Ethics in Information Technology, Second Edition 33

 Summary
• A professional from a legal standpoint
– Has passed the state licensing requirements
– Has earned the right to practice there
• IT professionals have many different relationships
– Each with its own set of ethical issues and potential
problems
• Professional code of ethics
– States the principles and core values essential to the
work of an occupational group

Ethics in Information Technology, Second Edition 36

 Self-Assessment Questions
1. A professional is someone who:
a. requires advanced training and experience
b. must exercise discretion and judgment in the course of his or her
work
c. requires specialized knowledge often long and intensive
academic preparation.
d. all of the above
2. Although end users often get the blame when it comes to using
illegal copies of commercial software, software piracy in a
corporate setting is sometimes directly traceable to ___________
3. The mission of the Business Software Alliance is to__________
4. Reporting a trade secret is an effort by an employee to attract
attention to a negligent, illegal, unethical, abusive, or dangerous
act by a company that threatens the public interest. True or False?
Ethics in Information Technology, Second Edition 38
 Self-Assessment Questions cont.
5. _________________ is the crime of obtaining goods, services,
or property through deception or trickery.
6. Résumé inflation is a usual and customary practice tolerated by
employers. True or False?
7. Society expects professionals to act in a way that:
a. causes no harm to society
b. provides significant benefits
c. establishes and maintains professional standards that protect the
public
d. all of the above
8. _________________ involves providing money, property, or
favors to someone in business or government to obtain a business
advantage.

Ethics in Information Technology, Second Edition 39

 Self-Assessment Questions cont.
9. _________________ is a process that one undertakes
voluntarily to prove competency in a set of skills.
a. Licensing
b. Certification
c. Registering
d. all of the above
10. There are many industry associations and vendor certificate
programs for IT workers. True or False?
11. _________________ has been defined as not doing something
that a reasonable person would do, or doing something that a
reasonable person would not do.
12. A _________________ states the principles and core values
that are essential to the work of a particular occupational group.

Ethics in Information Technology, Second Edition 40