I just watched an inspiring webinar from Gartner about “Digital Ethics: How Not to Mess Up With Technology”.
The philosophical background was introduced and some real-life cases discussed, including collection and selling of user data and the moral dilemmas phasing driverless cars. At the end the audience was asked to consider our own stance on digital ethics, with options for being black, gray and white hats:
- Black: Main goal is “try to make a buck,” there is no place for ethics in business.
- Gray: Just doing my job, try to avoid the discussion, and when needed, make it up as you go along.
- White: Think through the ethics of technology, and your position. Ethical responsibility outweighs business responsibility.
Food for thought. Once soldiers may just have been following orders and yuppies may have a mortgage to pay. Is it OK for a software developer to claim that all they did was implement the requirements and deliver on time, budget, scope?
The Software Engineering Code of Ethics and Professional Practice from ACM and IEEE does not provide a lot of help on this issue: “Software engineers shall act consistently with the public interest.”. Well, who is “public” and what is the public’s interest really?
A good example from the webinar: GPS software manufacturer collects (and anonymizes) data about users’ driving habbits. It is sold to ministry of infrastructure so that roads can be improved, public interest, no doubt. Then it is sold to the police who can analyse both where traffic is slow (public is clearly interested) and where people are speeding (public interest more ambiguous).
A more the dramatic example is software for defense and security industry – digital guns and bullets. It may be people that kill people, not guns (or software), but still developers play a role in creating the (more or less obvious) weapons used. Social networks and communication technology play a central role in bringing people together in peaceful demonstrations for popular viewpoints (positive public interest) and the same technologies serve counter demonstrations representing less popular viewpoints (which is of more ambiguous public interest), as well as enabling authorities to infiltrate and disrupt the events (degree of public interest very dependent on your point of view).
Looking in the Company Values isn’t an alternative to the professional code. Justifying actions with Company Values places one at the soldier level and in any case, few companies would have anything ethically ambiguous written into their published Values (but “shareholder value” may lead to flexibility and most companies have mortgages as well).
The only thing left is personal values and the will to stand up for them, which is not always easy, but one’s personal integrity may be worth paying for a too good too be true job offer.