Journal of Information, Communication and Ethics in Society

Professional ethics in the information age

Oliver Kisalay Burmeister,
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Professional
Professional ethics in the ethics in the
information age information
age
Oliver Kisalay Burmeister
School of Computing and Mathematics, Charles Sturt University,
Bathurst, New South Wales, Australia
Received 30 November 2016
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Revised 6 February 2017

Abstract Accepted 7 February 2017

Purpose – Professional ethics is explored with three main foci: a critique of codes of conduct and the value
of creating a global code for information and communication technology (ICT); a critique of ICT professional
certification; and the debate over whether ICT is really a profession.
Design/methodology/approach – This is a conceptual reflection on the current state of the ICT
industry internationally, informed by the literature.
Findings – Compared to a mature profession, such as health, ICT is a young profession. This is evidenced in
the disparity of domains of practice, the lack of agreement on universal values governing the industry and the
ongoing difficulties in creating international certification.
Originality/value – Until now, there has been little recognition of the corporatisation of ICT professionals
and the effect that has on their ability to engage in appropriate professional ethics. More research is needed to
explore appropriate ways in which ethical behaviour can be encouraged in the corporate workplace, including
how professional development can be strengthened through building learning organisations.
Keywords Globalisation, Healthcare, Human values, Codes of ethics
Paper type Research paper

Introduction
This paper explores three aspects of professional ethics. First, a critique of codes of conduct
and the value of creating a global code for information and communication technology (ICT).
Second, a critique of ICT professional certification, and finally, it explores the debate over
whether ICT is really a profession or simply artisan activity. It achieves this by first
exploring the concept of professional ethics as it relates to ICT, including the related issues
of professional development and how professionalism might be defined. Next, it addresses
those foci by exploring the domains of ICT, and how they relate to issues of certification and
other forms of professional accreditation. Finally, those foci are answered, based on the
discussion to that point.

Professionalism and ethics

This exploration of professional ethics in the information age begins by reflecting on the
association between professionalism and ethics. A good starting point is to consider more
generally what it means to be professional, using a virtue ethics interpretation. An example
of this is found in a review of the ACM/IEEE Code for Software Engineers (Volkman, 2013).
To be a professional is to define one’s self in terms of something one professes; professions
are defined in terms of shared values and projects. In light of that, ethical conduct is not
some further duty or extra burden on the professional. For the professional, ethics is not Journal of Information,
something added to the job that might conflict with your interests, not something you do in Communication and Ethics in
Society
addition to doing your job or as a constraint on what you would like to do instead. For the © Emerald Publishing Limited
1477-996X
professional, ethics is just what it means to do your job well on your own terms, the terms DOI 10.1108/JICES-11-2016-0045
 JICES you profess when you declare yourself to be a professional. Volkman (2013) uses
Aristotelian insights to suggest that what it is for a thing to be a good thing of its kind
depends on properly understanding what makes the thing exactly what it is. By analogy, it
is because a knife is for cutting that a good knife has to be sharp. If we know what
computing is for – what computer professionals mean to profess – we should be able to
discern what makes a good computer professional. This is complicated by the fact that what
computing is for will always be a moving target, a complication that is further explored in
the discussion on domains, below.
Ethical considerations are an important component in professionalism. This is
demonstrated by the Council for European Professional Informatics Societies (CEPIS),
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the representative body of national informatics associations throughout greater

Europe, representing over 450,000 ICT professionals in 32 countries (Tinholt et al.,
2015). CEPIS is actively involved in promoting professionalism in ICT in a way that
promotes high ethical standards. For instance, it has four core pillars for ICT
professionalism, one of which is a code of professional ethics, clearly establishing that
such a code is inseparable from discussions of professionalism. In fact, the link between
professionalism, codes of conduct and certification are seen in the following statement
(Tinholt et al., 2015, p. 78):
The very nature of professional work means that some knowledge and skills are best developed
through experience and that an understanding of complex issues, such as ethics, grows with
maturity. Further development will be provided at a full professional level through participation
in certification programmes.

Professional development
Throughout this article, parallels are drawn to health professionals, because it is one of the
oldest and most widely recognised “mature” professions, and also because, as a health
informatics researcher, I am highly familiar with it [see for example: (Teipel et al., 2016,
Burmeister and Marks, 2016; Burmeister, 2016; Burmeister et al., 2011; Burmeister, 2010).
Drawing on health literature, professional development “has been identified as a strategy to
improve the quality of” service provision by the profession (Cleary et al., 2010, p. 45).
Furthermore, Cleary et al. (2010) cite various literature to show that a focus on professional
development has been associated with greater job satisfaction, as well as greater client
satisfaction with the work of the professionals who have serviced their needs. This is
important to note, because all ICT certification systems, national and international, have
professional development as an integral component of such accreditation. That is, attaining
certified status is not the end, but implies that the person who has attained it, is committed
to demonstrable, ongoing professional development.
Another area in which ICT can learn from health professionals is in the
organisational culture emphasis. Cleary et al. (2010) see an impediment to
professionalism in that many health organisations do not value professional
development as part of their core business. They argue that cultural change is required
toward a “collective orientation towards learning”, further claiming that this is
necessary in health because it’s professionals have to “manage change and indeed
survive and thrive in the face of rapid and ongoing change” (Cleary et al., 2010, p. 47).
Arguably, the ICT industry faces similar professional challenges. The organisational
culture needs to be that of a learning organisation, rather than simply requiring
individual professionals to manage their own ongoing professional learning.
 Defining professionalism Professional
Definitions of what it means to be a professional vary. There are many common elements in ethics in the
the various definitions, but there are also some differences. Aside from researcher views,
and those of individual ICT societies, there are also larger organisations governing
information
industries, which include ICT. For instance, in Australia, there is Professions Australia, age
which has many member organisations (engineers, nurses, veterinarians, ICT and more),
with a total membership, through its member organisations, of over 350,000 professionals.
They define professionalism as (www.professions.com.au/about-us/what-is-a-professional):
A profession is a disciplined group of individuals who adhere to ethical standards and who hold
themselves out as, and are accepted by the public as possessing special knowledge and skills in a
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widely recognised body of learning derived from research, education and training at a high level,
and who are prepared to apply this knowledge and exercise these skills in the interest of others. It
is inherent in the definition of a profession that a code of ethics governs the activities of each
profession. Such codes require behaviour and practice beyond the personal moral obligations of
an individual. They define and demand high standards of behaviour in respect to the services
provided to the public and in dealing with professional colleagues. Further, these codes are
enforced by the profession and are acknowledged and accepted by the community.
In addition to Professions Australia, there are other governing bodies. For instance, the
Professional Standards Council is an independent statutory body working to
improve professional standards. Its 2015 publication, 21 years of regulatory innovation
through professional standards, states, “While the word ‘profession’ means different things
to different people, at its core it’s meant to indicate trust and expertise” (Professional
Standards Councils, 2015, p. 5).
As will be seen in the following section and in the discussion of certification below, a
limitation of definitions, such as the above, are their individualistic understanding. Many
ICT professionals work in the corporate settings of large organisations, where their personal
professionalism is challenged by corporate business demands. This is in part being
addressed, although it appears not intentionally, by the focus of international certification
on organisational support for professional recognition, with a focus on the organisations
who employ ICT professionals, in addition to the focus on those professionals themselves.

Corporatisation
The concept of corporatisation can be seen in the health profession. Given the business of
corporate healthcare, health professionals, on a daily basis, have to make decisions around
ethical dilemmas which characterise modern clinical practice. While health professions have
codes of conduct and guidelines for ethical conduct, such documents often do not align with
real dilemmas in the clinical area: for instance, nurses who are pressured to do double shifts
despite evidence about the danger of fatigue; doctors who, because of long waiting lists, are
expected to undertake surgical procedures for which no good evidence of effectiveness
exists; and midwives who, because of corporate policy, must refer mothers for Caesarean
section even though they know that they can birth safely. Professionals need to act morally
regardless of their employment status. It is as true for ICT professionals, as it is for those in
health. We are witnessing a historical transformation (Pava, 2005) and must, with these
professionals employed by the corporation, see such professionals in a new context.
Traditionally, the professions existed as a monopoly which defended the economic interests
of those in that profession (Coady, 1996). But now those professionals employed by the
corporation exist in a morally ambiguous situation. They desire that their expertise provides
them with autonomy, but such autonomy is frequently sacrificed through employment in
corporations, such as for reasons of economic advantage (Brint, 1994). So they have in effect
 JICES no true professional standing. They are in fact employees like any other employee but
because they think they have superior knowledge for which they are employed, they at heart
still believe that they should be accorded the accompanying autonomy: especially morally
(Dion, 2005). That is a major problem which has never existed in organisations until very
recently (Schwartz, 2005).
Professionals used to be torn between pure self-interest and altruism, but managed that
ongoing dichotomy as independent professionals. Now, however, the autonomy of ICT
professionals is under threat. We cannot separate prevailing ethical behaviour from the
existing historical circumstances (MacIntyre, 2007) that have changed regarding the
employment of “professionals” (Dion, 2005). Once, people became professionals so as to be
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self-employed (Coady, 1996) and could control their own workspace. Today, things are very
different for many ICT professionals who work as employees in large organisations.
Professionals need to act morally regardless of their employment status.
For instance, it has been shown that the phenomenon of tertiary trained health
professionals who are employed in corporations, face ethical challenges in the workplace
which are not faced by their colleagues working independently as autonomous professionals
(Faunce, 2015; Casali and Day, 2010). However, although the differences between corporate
and private health professionals has been documented, those differences have not been
addressed as yet, and hence, the health profession is unable to shed light on how ICT
professionals should deal with such challenges.
Ethics is largely an individual endeavour. As individuals, we encounter ethical dilemmas
and as individuals using our own moral imagination and moral sympathies we seek to
resolve them (Sandel, 2010). While that is true, we exist to a large degree in a shared moral
universe. Our moral imaginations and moral sympathies are affected by our communal
experiences in that ethical space (Hinman, 2007). Such communal experiences are more
common for professionals working, not for themselves, autonomously, but within
organisations (corporations). As shown by Prior et al. (2010), organisations which employ
ICT professionals need new ways of informing their workforce concerning how unethical
behaviour in the workplace can be effectively confronted.
To conclude this section, I believe that ours is a profession, but is yet to mature into the
fullness of what that terms implies. Over two decades ago, Bennett (1994) described what we
now call ICT as a “developing” profession. Then there was a celebration of recognition of
ICT as a profession (Burmeister, 2000), followed by critique that others had called it an
“emerging” profession, but that it failed to live up to what a profession really is (Fabian,
2011). More recently, the Chair of the International Federation for Information Processing
(IFIP) “International Professional Practice Partnership” (IP3) initiative and immediate past
President of the Australian Computer Society (ACS), Brenda Aynsley, claimed that as a
profession ICT is not yet “fully mature” (Aynsley and Graham, 2011). Like Aynsley, I
believe there is a way to go. Thus, we might describe ICT as a “young” profession at this
time. This is as opposed to a mature profession, such as health. As seen above, ICT shares
many things in common with health, including the definition of professionalism, the need for
professional development, the challenge of rapid industry changes and the challenge of
working in large organisations/corporations, rather than autonomously. However, there are
also significant differences between ICT and health, as seen in the next section, which must
be overcome on the road to maturity as a profession.

Domains of the ICT profession

One of the ongoing challenges for the ICT profession is the fact that it is not homogeneous.
ICT is a broad church. For instance, the Skills Framework for the Information Age (SFIA)
 addresses more than 90 different skill sets within its framework. Other organisations Professional
typically have smaller lists, but agreement on the diversity has not been reached and even ethics in the
how to categorise skill sets at a higher, abstract level. Fabian (2011) described this diversity
of roles in ICT as one of his reasons for arguing against ICT being a profession.
information
How to break up the domains of work in a meaningful way has been the subject of many age
ICT societies’ certification programmes. New domains continue to emerge, such as the recent
one of “cyber security”. There have been various, disparate attempts to classify the domains.
This is one reason that our profession cannot yet be described as “fully mature”. By
contrast, in health, there are four clearly distinguished domains: medical, dental, allied
health and nursing. If two people meet and both are ICT professionals, then they may do
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very different work and use different vocabulary. But if two nurses meet, then their work
practice and the vocabulary describing their work is much more closely aligned. The ICT
industry needs similarly to be able to have key domains of work practice.

Certification
Various domains have had vendor specific, internationally recognised certification, which
has been used for many years to enable skills transfer from one nation to another. However,
similar moves to certify professional standing have not proven as readily transferrable. For
instance, the British Computer Society (BCS) has attempted to charter professionals,
requiring a high standard in similar fashion to having chartered accountants and engineers;
it used SFIA as a measure, requiring a minimum of Level 5 (BCS, 2016). Similarly, in
Australia, various forms of certification have been implemented, each with varying success
at recognition even within Australia, let alone internationally. An early form was that of
“Certified Member of the ACS”, which was superseded by at first one level and more
recently three levels of certification: Certified Technologist, Certified Professional and
Certified Master Practitioner (Aynsley and Graham, 2011); these too are defined using SFIA
levels. Other nations have similarly struggled to produce certification systems that are
recognised beyond their borders.
All such initiatives have lacked the power to create a standard that is widely recognised.
In part, this is seen in how few professional societies are willing to publicise the uptake of
certification within their membership. One society which did was the ACS, which showed
that as of October 2011 of its then 20,048 members, 5,392 had chosen to take up one of its
then two levels of certification (Aynsley and Graham, 2011). Even if that figure of almost
27 per cent uptake of certification were generalisable to other ICT societies, it does make it
difficult to recommend any one country’s certification approach as an international example
of best practice. It effectively means that three out of four ICT professionals fail to see a
value proposition in certification.
The new kid on the block is IP3. Similar to the BCS and ACS initiatives, IP3 is based on
SFIA. It is, however, different from such national initiatives because it’s an initiative of IFIP,
an international body with 56 member ICT societies/countries. Recognised by United
Nations and other world bodies, IFIP has had significant success in bringing the ICT
community together. This is seen in that it sponsors over 100 conferences annually and has
successfully brought together over 3,500 computing professionals for its various
committees, ranging from software engineering, through networking and security, to
human computer interaction, education and many other areas of special interest to its
member organisations. One might argue that previous national initiatives were bottom-up
approaches, whereas IP3 is a top-down approach – an initiative that begins with an
international focus, which is then adopted by the 56 member societies and the countries of
 JICES which they are representative. Thus, it is the first, truly global, attempt at certification. Such
international cooperation speaks to the maturing of our profession.

The practice of the profession

This section begins with a review of an investigation of ethical practice in the ICT
profession. It builds on similar initiatives in other regions, such as a series of six surveys
between 1998 and 2010 that was undertaken to explore the attitudes of information systems
(IS) professionals and which provides a unique snapshot of the world of IS as seen through
an ethical lens (Prior et al., 2010). Interestingly, the first of the three main recommendations
by Prior et al. (2010) focuses on the role of organisations in promoting professional
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behaviour in the workplace. This section then re-examines the discussion about creating a
global code of professional practice. It ends with a brief discussion of IFIP IP3, extending the
above discussion on certification, to include what that initiative contributes to establishing a
standard of professional practice.

Ethical practice in the ICT profession

In a study partnered with the ACS, a comprehensive investigation was undertaken of the
Australian ICT workplace in relation to ethical practice (Al-Saggaf et al., 2016; Al-Saggaf
et al., 2015). It used a mixed methods approach, in which all active ACS members
(approximately 18,600) were invited to participate in a web-based survey (achieving a 12.4
per cent response rate) and was followed by in-depth interviews with 43 participants
selected from those who responded to the survey, with a final phase of the research
involving focus groups with ACS Fellows and other senior ICT professionals. A unique
contribution of this study is that it revealed reasons behind unethical behaviour in the ICT
workplace. The researchers focused on the reasons for which there was at least 30 per cent
agreement between respondents, and five reasons met this criterion, namely, pressure, bad
management, greed, lack of respect for ICT people and communication issues (Al-Saggaf
et al., 2015). Particularly interesting for the present article was the view of these researchers
that resolution lay not in improved individual behaviour, but in improved corporate
cultures, which encourage ethical behaviour.

A global code of professional practice

There have been many, failed, attempts at creating a global ICT code of professional
conduct. All such attempts have come up against two main challenges, that of the rapidity of
technological change and that of cultural diversity. Some have formed the view that it is not
possible: “For an international organization like IFIP, formulating a code acceptable for all
Members will be an impossible task” (Holvast, 1996, p. 49). Bynum (2008) concluded that the
two most promising approaches were to be found in Gotterbarn’s focus on professional
ethics and, in the values literature, particularly as espoused through the value sensitive
design (VSD) literature. Similarly, Payne and Landry (2006), when comparing ICT and
business codes of ethics, sided with values as a unifying factor. Recently, this was taken a
step further, with the proposal that the way forward is through a hybrid approach which
splits such a code into two. First, a code of ethics involving high-level values which are
universally acceptable. Second, a code of professional conduct that is implemented at a
national level (Burmeister, 2013).
Drawing once again on the example of the more mature health profession, one finds that
it has an internationally accepted standard of four values. Those four values of autonomy,
non-maleficence, beneficence and justice, draw upon philosophical theories of utilitarianism,
Kantianism, rights theory and Communitarianism, and lie at the core of professional ethics
 in healthcare (Beauchamp and Childress, 2009), as has also been reflected in health Professional
implementations (Pakrasi et al., 2015; Alzheimer Europe, 2010). Similarly, as ICT matures as ethics in the
a profession, certain key values will likely be seen as universal, which will then form the
basis of an international code of ICT ethics. Although not addressing values for an
information
international code, work in the area of universal values within ICT has been progressing on age
a number of fronts, including philosophical aspects of ICT (Moor, 2005; Moor, 1999,
Messerly, 2007) and also in relation to software engineering practice, as seen in work on
VSD (van den Hoven and Manders-Huits, 2009; Miller et al., 2007).

Developing high-quality international professional standards while promoting ethical values

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As seen above, there are multiple domains within ICT. Yet IP3 attempts to support all those
areas, through a comprehensive, global standard for professional practice. The stated aim is
to achieve this while also “promoting strong ethical values” (IFIP IP3, 2016). The features of
that standard are listed on their website and are not repeated here. However, noteworthy is
that there again appears the individual to corporate distinction, discussed above. IP3 is
applied to the organisation, “not to individuals” (IFIP IP3, 2016). Individual professional
practice is then judged in relation to SFIA standards, namely, Level 5 and above.
A limitation in the IP3 standard is that it assumes that the code of professional conduct
promoted by organisations will have sanctions associated with it. However, in my
experience that is not always the case. There are numerous professional societies which use
their code of ethics and/or code of professional practice, as an incentive to “do the right
thing”, but have no mechanism to enforce such behaviour.

Conclusion
Through the discussion above, this article has explored three aspects of professional ethics: a
critique of codes of conduct, including the value of creating a global ICT code; a critique of ICT
professional certification; and whether ICT really is a profession. Managers, researchers and
policy-makers need a clear understanding of what the ICT profession entails and how to
recognise and distinguish professionals in employment recruitment situations. Organisational
culture needs to support the ongoing learning required of ICT professionals. Professional
development activities need to be evaluated, monitored and need to be seen as core business.
Until now, there has been little recognition of the corporatisation of ICT professionals
and the effect that has on their ability to engage in appropriate professional ethics. More
research is needed to explore appropriate ways in which ethical behaviour can be
encouraged in the corporate workplace.
It would seem that the goal of a global code is not totally achievable. If, as has been done in
the literature and by many ICT societies (but not all) (Burmeister, 2000; Berleur et al., 2008;
Burmeister, 2013), values are seen as a code of ethics and the rest as a code of conduct, then it
appears that a global code of ethics is achievable, whereas a global code of conduct is not.
Professional recognition at a global level is achievable, particularly as seen in the efforts
of IFIP through its IP3 initiative, linked strongly to the international, widely accepted
framework, SFIA. Other attempts have been local implementations, such as levels of
certification in Australia and Chartering in the UK, but by their nature, they tend to have a
national focus that attempts an international reach. The IP3 initiative, on the other hand,
began as an international focus, driven by the largest and most reputable international ICT
organisation, IFIP.
Finally, as stated above, I contend that ICT is a “young” profession and agree with the
claim by the Chair of IFIP IP3, made six years ago, that we yet have a way to go to become
“fully mature” as a profession (Aynsley and Graham, 2011).
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Corresponding author
Oliver Kisalay Burmeister can be contacted at: oburmeister@csu.edu.au

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