Republic of the Philippines

CAVITE STATE UNIVERSITY

Silang Campus
Biga I, Silang, Cavite
 046 513-5706  046 513-3965
✉ cvsusilang@cvsu.edu.ph

DEPARTMENT OF INFORMATION TECHNOLGY

DCIT 65 – Social and Professional Issues

Module 2 – Week 4
Ethical Behavior of IT Professionals

Overview

This module discusses the ethical behavior of IT professionals. Included here are the guidelines
for computer professionals and certification. Also, defining the field of ethics, along with
aesthetics, concerns matters of value, and thus comprises the branch of philosophy called
axiology.

Objectives

After working on this module, you will be able to:

 observe how code of ethics, professional organizations, certifications, and licensing
affects the ethical behavior of IT professional;
 identify the common ethical issues that IT user faces; and
 state the key characteristics distinguish a professional from other kinds of workers and
what is the role of an IT professional.

Ethical Behavior of IT Professionals

According to Melissa Woo, just because you can do something doesn’t mean you should do it.
Like any other profession, information technology benefits from a standard, accepted code of
ethics that helps guide behavior in sometimes confusing contexts.

“Is it okay to read campus users’ email?”

DCIT 65 SOCIAL AND PROFESSIONAL ISSUES - BSCS/BSIT P. MAGNO - SECOND SEMESTER AY 2020-2021
 “Would you tell the users that their email is being read?”
“What if the user is someone you think might be storing illegal content on the laptop?”

If any of these questions caused you to stop and think about what you would do, you’re not
alone. Ethical choices often seem murky. We live in a human society, subject to less-than-
complete information, societal pressures, and multiple interpretations of facts. More often than
not, we need to apply professional judgment, which is guided by our own experiences as well as
reliance on laws, policies, and culture.

Let’s consider somewhat more complex situations:

You are an On-The-Job Training student that manages the physical data. You somehow
read the information and see the discrepancies in every part of it.

You raise your concerns with your trainer, but are told this is a sensitive manner and
details cannot be shared with you. Now you are under impression that you might not
pass this training.

What would you do?

Allegations are being made against your classmate that he cheated the exam. You
believed that he is innocent through the review of CCTV cameras in your room to which
you have access.

What would you do?

As IT professional or becoming one, what should we do when we encounter potentially murky

situations like the ones described? Occasionally existing laws or institutional policy will guide
ethical behavior; but sometimes they won’t. This is what many people always do not understand
is that what is legal is not always ethical.

Doing something in an ethical manner is one of the responsibilities of being an IT professional. If

something is done in unethical manner, there are risks of the trust of our students, faculty, staff,
communities and the general public. If without trust there will be difficulties on how IT
professionals can continue to perform their responsibilities effectively.

Ethical Guidelines for IT Professionals

There are many existing ethical guidelines depending on what someone career is. A number of
sources help IT professionals searching for ethical guidelines within the scope of their job
duties. A lot of associations have its own guidelines, for example the Association of Information

DCIT 65 SOCIAL AND PROFESSIONAL ISSUES - BSCS/BSIT P. MAGNO - SECOND SEMESTER AY 2020-2021
 Technology Professionals (AITP). This particular association has a code of ethics and
standards of conduct, and SANS has written an IT code of ethics. Among other elements
that describe ethical behavior in the profession, in general these codes state that IT professional
need to commit to:
 Integrity
 Competence
 Professional Responsibilities
 Work Responsibilities
 Societal responsibilities

Specific guidance stems from these general principles. Some common commitments between
the three codes are to:
 Maintain technical competence
 Avoid injury to others, their property, reputation, or employment
 Reject bribes, kickbacks, etc.

Setting Your Own Professional Ethics

Responding ethically in the two scenarios in which one’s livelihood or someone’s
innocence are involved isn’t so straightforward. Familiarity with standards of ethics for the
profession can help provide guidance on ethical behavior in complex and confusing
contexts such as these. After all, at work you have relationships with co-workers,
employers, customers, clients, users, and the community. In order to navigate this
complexity, all of us need to understand the ethics for each of these relationships. In a
broader sense, we need professional ethics because of the impact that our actions have
on society as a whole.

Certifications

Certification indicates that a professional possesses a particular set of skills, knowledge, or

abilities, in the opinion of the certifying organization. Unlike licensing, which applies only to
people and is required by law, certification can also apply to products (e.g., the Wi-Fi
CERTIFIED logo assures that the product has met rigorous interoperability testing to ensure
that it will work with other Wi-Fi-certified products) and is generally voluntary. IT-related

DCIT 65 SOCIAL AND PROFESSIONAL ISSUES - BSCS/BSIT P. MAGNO - SECOND SEMESTER AY 2020-2021
 certifications may or may not include a requirement to adhere to a code of ethics, whereas such
a requirement is standard with licensing.
Government Licensing

In the United States, a government license is government-issued permission to engage in an

activity or to operate a business. It is generally administered at the state level and often requires
that the recipient pass a test of some kind. Some professionals must be licensed, including
certified public accountants (CPAs), lawyers, doctors, various types of medical and daycare
providers, and some engineers.

IT Professional Malpractice

Negligence has been defined as not doing something that a reasonable person would do, or
doing something that a reasonable person would not do. Duty of care refers to the obligation to
protect people against any unreasonable harm or risk. For example, people have a duty to keep
their pets from attacking others and to operate their cars safely. Similarly, businesses must keep
dangerous pollutants out of the air and water, make safe products, and maintain safe operating
conditions for employees.
For example, in the IT arena, consider a hypothetical negligence case in which an employee
inadvertently destroyed millions of customer records in an Oracle database. The standard of
measure would be higher if the defendant were a licensed, Oracle certified database
administrator (DBA) with 10 years of experience rather than an unlicensed systems analyst with
no DBA experience or specific knowledge of the Oracle software.

IT Users

This section focuses on encouraging employees’ ethical use of IT, which is an area of growing
concern as more companies provide employees with PCs, tablets, cellphones, and other
devices to access to corporate information systems, data, and the Internet.

Common Ethical Issues for IT Users

 Software Piracy - A common violation occurs when employees copy software from
their work computers for use at home. For example, the software piracy rate in China
exceeds 80 percent, so it is clear that the business managers and IT professionals in
that country do not take a strong stand against the practice.

DCIT 65 SOCIAL AND PROFESSIONAL ISSUES - BSCS/BSIT P. MAGNO - SECOND SEMESTER AY 2020-2021
  Inappropriate Use of Computing Resources - Some employees use their
computers to surf popular Web sites that have nothing to do with their jobs,
participate in chat rooms, view pornographic sites, and play computer games. These
activities eat away at worker productivity and waste time.
 Inappropriate Sharing of Information - Every organization stores vast amounts of
information that can be classified as either private or confidential. Private data
describes individual employees—for example, their salary information, attendance
data, health records, and performance ratings.

Supporting the Ethical Practices of IT Users

The growing use of IT has increased the potential for new ethical issues and problems;
thus, many organizations have recognized the need to develop policies that protect
against abuses. Although no policy can stop wrongdoers, it can set forth the general
rights and responsibilities of all IT users, establish boundaries of acceptable and
unacceptable behavior, and enable management to punish violators. Adherence to a
policy can improve services to users, increase productivity, and reduce costs.
Companies can take several of the following actions when creating an IT usage policy.

 Establishing Guidelines for Use of Company Software - Company IT managers

must provide clear rules that govern the use of home computers and associated
software. Some companies negotiate contracts with software manufacturers and
provide PCs and software so that IT users can work at home.
 Defining the Appropriate Use of IT Resources - Companies must develop,
communicate, and enforce written guidelines that encourage employees to respect
corporate IT resources and use them to enhance their job performance.
 Installing and Maintaining a Corporate Firewall - A firewall is hardware or
software that serves as a barrier between an organization’s network and the Internet;
a firewall also limits access to the company’s network based on the organization’s
Internet-usage policy.

Activity 3
e-Journal 1 – Ethical Issues that IT User Faces

Use the following guide question below in writing your e-Journal. Submit your entry in an

DCIT 65 SOCIAL AND PROFESSIONAL ISSUES - BSCS/BSIT P. MAGNO - SECOND SEMESTER AY 2020-2021
 appropriate submission bin.

1. What are the unethical behavior or issues have you been experienced? How and why it
happened?
2. What is your stand between having a licensed/paid or unlicensed software? Explain why?
3. As a student what code of ethics are you applying to yourself? Support your answer.

References

Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy Retrieved from

https://www.rep.routledge.com/articles/thematic/information-technology-and-ethics/v-1

George W. Reynolds. (2014). Ethics in Information Technology. 5th Edition.

Woo, M., (2017). Ethics and the IT Professional. Retrieved from

https://er.educause.edu/articles/2017/3/ethics-and-the-it-professional

DCIT 65 SOCIAL AND PROFESSIONAL ISSUES - BSCS/BSIT P. MAGNO - SECOND SEMESTER AY 2020-2021