IT Ethics: Extreme Examples

A few weeks ago Computerworld published an article by Tam Harbert titled When trusted IT pros go bad.  The article included several examples of extremely poor decision making and actions by IT professionals.  It should be acknowledged that these are not isolated incidents, but rather, many ethical issues occur without public notice.

In academia there is a growing trend toward weaving ethics into the curriculum.  Faculty at these institutions targeting ethics in the curriculum often try to find case studies related to their topics to demonstrate real world examples of the ethical dilemmas students may face in the workforce.  However, as Harbert noted, many times these ethical violations are not published since organizations do not wish to share these unfortunate experiences and prefer to resolve the issues as quietly as possible.

I certainly understand the desire for organizations to quietly resolve these issues but there is certainly value in sharing these issues.  We need to share these examples so that we are able to learn from these experiences.  Without access to these real world examples, faculty are limited to a small handful of stereotypical ethics case studies.

I was excited to read the Harbert article and find some additional ethical examples but I wish articles like this were more prevalent.  Our adherence to our ethical duties in the field is critical to the creditability of our profession and the betterment of our society.  As faculty, we must be diligent in sharing these examples with our students so that they may be more cognoscente of some of the issues they may face and be more prepared to make the right decision.