Ethics inInformation

Technology, Fourth Edition

Chapter 2
Ethics for IT Workers and IT Users

1
 Objectives

• As you read this chapter, consider the following

questions:
– What key characteristics distinguish a professional
from other kinds of workers, and is an IT worker
considered a professional?
– What factors are transforming the professional
services industry?
– What relationships must an IT worker manage, and
what key ethical issues can arise in each?

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 Objectives (cont’d.)
– How do codes of ethics, professional organizations,
certification, and licensing affect the ethical behavior of
IT professionals?
– What is meant by compliance, and how does it help
promote the right behaviors and discourage undesirable
ones?

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 IT Professionals

• Profession is a calling that requires:

– Specialized knowledge
– Long and intensive academic preparation
• Professionals:
– Require advanced training and experience
– Must exercise discretion and judgment in their work
– Their work cannot be standardized
– Contribute to society, participate in lifelong training,
assist other professionals
– Carry special rights and responsibilities

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 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)

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 Are IT Workers Professionals?
(cont’d.)
• Legal perspective
– IT workers do not meet legal definition of professional
• Not licensed by state or federal government
• Not liable for malpractice

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 The Changing Professional Services
Industry
• IT workers are considered part of the professional
services industry
• Seven forces are changing professional services
– Client sophistication (able to drive hard bargains)
– Governance (due to major scandals)
– Connectivity (instant communications)
– Transparency (view work-in-progress in real-time)
– Modularization (able to outsource modules)
– Globalization (worldwide sourcing)
– Commoditization (for low-end services)

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 Professional Relationships That Must
Be Managed
• IT workers involved in relationships with:
– Employers
– Clients
– Suppliers
– Other professionals
– IT users
– Society at large

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 Relationships Between IT
Workers and Employers
• IT workers agree on many aspects of work
relationship before workers accept job offer
• Other aspects of work relationship defined in
company’s policy and procedure manual or code of
conduct
• Some aspects develop over time
• As steward of organization’s IT resources, IT workers
must set an example and enforce policies regarding the
ethical use of IT in:

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 Relationships Between IT
Workers and Employers
• Software piracy
– Act of illegally making copies of software or enabling
access to software to which they are not entitled
– Area in which IT workers can be tempted to violate laws and
policies
– The Business Software Alliance (BSA) is a trade group
representing the world’s largest software and hardware
manufacturers; mission is to stop the unauthorized copying
of software
– Thousands of cases prosecuted each year

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 Relationships Between
IT Workers and Employers (cont’d.)

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 Relationships Between
IT Workers and Employers (cont’d.)
• IT workers must set an example and enforce policies
regarding the ethical use of IT in: (cont’d.)
– Trade secrets
• Business information generally unknown to public
• Company takes actions to keep confidential
• Require cost or effort to develop
• Have some degree of uniqueness or novelty
– Whistle-blowing
• Employee attracts attention to a negligent, illegal,
unethical, abusive, or dangerous act that threatens the
public interest

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 Relationships Between
IT Workers and Clients
• IT worker 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

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 Relationships Between
IT Workers and Clients (cont’d.)
• Client makes decisions about a project based on
information, alternatives, and recommendations
provided by the IT worker
• Client trusts IT worker to act in client’s best interests
• IT worker trusts that client will provide relevant
information, listen to and understand what the IT worker
says, ask questions to understand impact of key
decisions, and use the information to make wise choices

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 Relationships Between
IT Workers and Clients (cont’d.)
• Ethical problems arise if a company recommends its own
products and services to remedy problems they have
detected
– Creates a conflict of interest
• Problems arise during a project if IT workers are
unable to provide full and accurate reporting of a
project’s status
– Finger pointing and heated discussions can ensue

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 Relationships Between
IT Workers and Clients (cont’d.)
• Fraud
– Crime of obtaining goods, services, or property
through deception or trickery
• Misrepresentation
– Misstatement or incomplete statement of material
fact
– If misrepresentation causes a party to enter into a
contract, that party may have the right to cancel
contract or seek reimbursement for damages

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 Relationships Between
IT Workers and Clients (cont’d.)
• Breach of contract
– One party fails to meet the terms of a contract
– When there is material breach of contract:
• The non-breaching party may rescind the contract,
seek restitution of any compensation paid to the
breaching party, and be discharged from any further
performance under the contract
• IT projects are joint efforts in which vendors and
customers work together
– When there are problems, it is difficult to assign who is
at fault

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 Relationships Between IT
Workers and Suppliers
• Develop good working relationships with suppliers:
– To encourage flow of useful information and ideas to
develop innovative and cost-effective ways of using the
supplier in ways that the IT worker may not have
considered
– By dealing fairly with them
– By not making unreasonable demands

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 Relationships Between
IT Workers and Suppliers (cont’d.)
• Bribery
– Providing money, property, or favors to obtain a
business advantage
– U.S. Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA): crime to
bribe a foreign official, a foreign political party official,
or a candidate for foreign political office
– At what point does a gift become a bribe?
– No gift should be hidden
– Perceptions of donor and recipient can differ
– United Nations Convention Against Corruption is a
global treaty to fight bribery and corruption

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 Relationships Between
IT Workers and Suppliers (cont’d.)

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 Relationships Between
IT Workers and Other Professionals
• Professionals feel a degree of loyalty to other
members of their profession
• Professionals owe each other adherence to their
profession’s code of conduct
• Ethical problems among the IT profession
– Résumé inflation on 30% of U.S. job applications
– Inappropriate sharing of corporate information
• Information might be sold intentionally or shared
informally with those who have no need to know

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 Relationships Between IT
Workers and IT Users
• IT user: person using a hardware or software
product
• IT workers’ duties
– Understand users’ needs and capabilities
– Deliver products and services that meet those
needs
– Establish environment that supports ethical
behavior:
• To discourages software piracy
• To minimize inappropriate use of corporate
computing resources
• To avoid inappropriate sharing of information
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 Relationships Between
IT Workers and Society
• Society expects members of a profession:
– To provide significant benefits
– To not cause harm through their actions
• Actions of an IT worker can affect society
• Professional organizations provide codes of ethics to
guide IT workers’ actions

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 Professional Codes of Ethics

• State the principles and core values that are

essential to the work of an occupational group
• Most codes of ethics include:
– What the organization aspires to become
– Rules and principles by which members of the
organization are expected to abide
• Many codes also include commitment to continuing
education for those who practice the profession

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 Professional Codes of Ethics
(cont’d.)
• Following a professional code of ethics can produce
benefits for the individual, the profession, and society as
a whole
– Ethical decision making
– High standards of practice and ethical behavior
– Trust and respect from general public
– Evaluation benchmark for self-assessment

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 Professional Organizations

• No universal code of ethics for IT professionals

• No single, formal organization of IT professionals
has emerged as preeminent
• Five of the most prominent organizations include:
– Association for Computing Machinery (ACM)
– Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers
Computer Society (IEEE-CS)
– Association of IT Professionals (AITP)
– SysAdmin, Audit, Network, Security (SANS)
Institute

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 Certification

• Indicates that a professional possesses a particular set of

skills, knowledge, or abilities in the opinion of the
certifying organization
• Can also apply to products
• Generally voluntary
• May or may not require adherence to a code of
ethics
• Employers view as benchmark of knowledge
• Opinions are divided on value of certification

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 Certification (cont’d.)

• 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, or in some cases, a
hands-on lab to demonstrate skills and knowledge
– Can take years to obtain necessary experience
– Training can be expensive

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 Certification (cont’d.)

• Industry association certifications

– Require a higher level of experience and a broader
perspective than vendor certifications
– Must sit for and pass written exam
– May need to pay annual renewal fee, earn continuing
education credits, and/or pass renewal test
– Lag in developing tests that cover new technologies
– Are moving from purely technical content to a broader
mix of technical, business, and behavioral competencies

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 Government Licensing

• License is a government-issued permission to

engage in an activity or operate a business
• Generally administered at the state level in the
United States
• Often requires that recipient pass a test
• Some professionals must be licensed – doctors,
lawyers, CPAs, medical and day care providers,
engineers
• One goal: protect public safety

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 Government Licensing (cont’d.)

• Case for licensing IT workers

– Encourages following highest standards of profession
– Encourages practicing a code of ethics
– Violators would be punished
• Without licensing, there are no requirements for
heightened care and no concept of professional
malpractice

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 Government Licensing (cont’d.)

• Issues associated with government licensing of IT

workers
– There are few 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 workers

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 IT Professional Malpractice

• Negligence: not doing something that a reasonable

person would do, or doing something that a reasonable
person would not do
• Duty of care: obligation to protect people against
any unreasonable harm or risk
– Reasonable person standard
– Reasonable professional standard
• Professional malpractice: professionals who breach the
duty of care are liable for injuries that their negligence
causes

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 IT Users

• Employees’ ethical use of IT is an area of growing

concern because of increased access to:
– Personal computers
– Corporate information systems and data
– The Internet

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 Common Ethical Issues for IT Users

• Software piracy
• Inappropriate use of computing resources
– Erodes productivity and wastes time
– Could lead to lawsuits
• Inappropriate sharing of information, including:
– Every organization stores vast amounts of private or
confidential data
• Private data (employees and customers)
• Confidential information (company and operations)

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 Supporting the Ethical Practices of IT
Users
• Policies that protect against abuses:
– Set forth general rights and responsibilities of users
– Create boundaries of acceptable behavior
– Enable management to punish violators
• Policy components include:
– Establishing guidelines for use of company software
– Defining appropriate use of IT resources
– Structuring information systems to protect data and
information
– Installing and maintaining a corporate firewall

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 Supporting the Ethical Practices of IT
Users (cont’d.)

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 Compliance

• To be in accordance with established policies,

guidelines, specifications, and legislation
– Sarbanes-Oxley – established requirements for
internal controls
– HIPAA – ensures security and privacy of employee
healthcare data
– Failure to be in conformance can lead to criminal or
civil penalties and also lawsuits

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 Compliance (cont’d.)

• Major challenge to comply with multiple government

and industry regulations that are sometimes in conflict
To meet this challenge:
• – Implement software to track and record compliance
actions
– Hire management consultants for advice and training
– Create Chief Compliance Officer position

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 Compliance (cont’d.)

• Audit committee is subset of the board of directors,

with oversight for the following activities:
– Quality and integrity of accounting and reporting
practices and controls
– Compliance with legal and regulatory requirements
– Qualifications, independence, and performance of
organization’s independent auditor
– Performance of company’s internal audit team

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 Compliance (cont’d.)

• Internal audit committee responsibilities:

– Determine that internal systems and controls are
adequate and effective
– Verify existence of company assets and maintain
proper safeguards over their protection
– Measure the organization’s compliance with its own
policies and procedures
– Insure that institutional policies and procedures,
appropriate laws, and good practices are followed
– Evaluate adequacy and reliability of information
available for management decision making

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 Summary

• Professionals
– Require advanced training and experience
– Must exercise discretion and judgment in their work
– Their work cannot be standardized
• From a legal standpoint, a professional:
– Has passed the state licensing requirements
– Has earned the right to practice in a state(s)
• IT professionals have many different relationships
– Each with its own ethical issues and potential
problems

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 Summary (cont’d.)

• Professional code of ethics

– States the principles and core values essential to the work
of an occupational group
– Serves as a guideline for ethical decision making
– Promotes high standards of practice and behavior
– Enhances trust and respect from the general public
– Provides an evaluation benchmark
• Licensing and certification of IT professionals
– Would increase the reliability and effectiveness of
information systems
– Raises many issues
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 Summary (cont’d.)

• IT-related professional organizations have

developed their code of ethics that:
– Outlines what the organization aspires to
become
– Lists rules and principles for members
– Includes a commitment to continuing education for
• those who practice the profession
Audit committee and internal audit team have a major
role in ensuring that both the IT organization and IT
users are in compliance with guidelines and various
legal and regulatory practices
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