All profession in IT has their ethics, and every single professional has their ethical and social accountability towards the society. They can be an IT manager, Programmer, Quality assurance or a Database Administrator, every person must follow moral values. Most of the moral principles are ruled by competence, transparency, equality, honesty and consideration (DBALAB, 2015). It plays a very crucial part in the professional environment because often a situation may come along that questions one’s principles. Fundamentally, it is “the procedure of categorizing an issue, producing alternatives, and choosing among them so that the alternatives selected capitalize on the most important principled ideals while also achieving the planned goal”. (Banks, 2016)
Ethics outlines the viewpoints or code of conduct anticipated of an individual by a group, the country, profession, or a specific form to which the individual fit in (Rogerson, Weckert, ; Chris Simpson, 2000). These strategies articulate how individuals should conduct themselves, and similarly build the ethical code by which the world subsists. Several ethical dilemmas are characteristically complicated and the outcomes on the most appropriate course of action is generally challenging (Lin, 2007). You make ethical valuations through judgment and defend by collected appeal of a series of traditional values.
The part of integrity in software system design has enhanced in distinction lately. Bowyer (2001) provides a preliminary insight on ethical matters in the digital stage, categorizing them into confidentiality, accuracy, possessions, and availability concerns. Substantial proficient ethics for IT experts, for example, rotates around preserving and emerging a reputable status for being the sort of individual, who will habitually do earnest determination, to make sure a project is finalized before the deadline successfully.
Way back in 2005 when I was in India working for a small IT company. Our company used to work on outsourced projects from UK and USA. My skillsets then were Microsoft technologies including Asp.Net C# and SQL. Our firm had got a very crucial and major project from their top-notch clients in USA for Content Management (CM). The expertise required for this project was Dotnetnuke, this CM had been then new and popular free source tool. We team of 4 programmers were requested to evaluate the project depending on our C# skillsets. Our upper management made it clear that due to budget issues there would not be any formal training for this project, whereas our clients were misinformed that company has in house Dotnetnuke experts with hands on experience. The project initiated with us self- training, learning and then coding. Needing to grow and prove ourselves we were eager and excited to learn/work on new technology. But later, we missed few of our target, clients were very disappointed along with loads of pressure from senior management and client to be on track. This really took toll on our everyday lives with us self-training in evening and coding at day time. Our team stood up and voiced our concerns to senior management about having formal training before resuming the project. We informed them very clearly about the new technology with unrealistic deadline. It was a draining expedition but management someway persuaded client by rescheduling the deadline and granting us more time for appropriate training.
With diverse guidelines and beliefs, information and understanding some of the ethical or moral to an individual may not be ethical to the others. The message learned is always follow the spiritual instinct that will save your integrity in doing what is correct and defend yourself and others. (Banks, 2016).
Reference
Banks, S (2016), ‘Everyday ethics in professional life: social work as ethics work’, Ethics ; Social Welfare, 10, 1, p. 35, Publisher Provided Full Text Searching File, EBSCOhost, (Accessed on: 14 September 2018).
Barger, RN (2008), Computer Ethics. Electronic Book : A Case-Based Approach, n.p.: Cambridge : Cambridge University Press, 2008., University of Liverpool Catalogue, EBSCOhost, (Accessed on: 14 September 2018).
Bowyer, K (2001), Ethics And Computing. Electronic Book : Living Responsibly In A Computerized World, n.p.: New York : IEEE Press, 2001., University of Liverpool Catalogue, EBSCOhost, viewed 14 September 2018
DBAGroup (2015) DBA Group Code of Ethics and Code of Conduct. ONLINE Available at: http://www.dbalab.it/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/DBA-Group_2015_07_20-DBA_Codice-etico-DBA-Group-rew-1-del-19-6-2015-ENGR1.pdf. (Accessed on: 14 September 2018).
Rogerson, S, Weckert, J, ; Simpson, C (2000), ‘An ethical review of information systems development – The Australian Computer Society’s code of ethics and SSADM’, Information Technology & People, 13, 2, p. 121-136, Scopus®, EBSCOhost, (Accessed on: 14 September 2018)