Importance of Ethics Among IT Professionals
Ethics are not only important to
the people who are majoring in IT, but are also important and compulsory to
many aspects and fields in our line of work. Without ethics, there might be
negative effects and consequences affecting us and our society. In a basic
term, ethics are methods, procedures or perspective which helps people on how
to act, analyze and solve complicated problems and issues. While this term may
be shared among many fields, different fields possess different code of ethics
which depends on the their aims and goals. Choosing not to study and adhere to
the different type of ethics may cause negative effects and impacts to the
company. Moreover, being ethical is important in becoming professionals,
regardless of jobs or fields. It is considered as valuable assets in gaining
reputation for any type of company.
In the
field of information technology, ethics help the professionals distinguish
between right and wrong related to the computational field. This can be seen in
one of the Golden Rules of the professional conduct ; “Do unto others as you
would have them do unto you”. Another example is the Heuristic Methods; also a
code of conduct which aid in differentiating between ethical
and unethical behavior, thus enabling the person to recognize solutions and
solving the ethical problems encountered.
Although humans were thought in
differentiating between right and wrong since birth via parenting, we would
have to choose our own path when ascending into adults. So, we should learn and
adhere to the code of ethics based on our chosen profession. Thus, ethics for
IT professionals exists. IT experts of any level would intentionally or
unintentionally do the wrong things if they are do not study the code of ethics
based on their field. Ethics for computer networking may be different from the
one of a system analyst.
Learning and adhere to the
ethics related to someone’s profession helps in improving cooperation and
teamwork between IT professionals, enabling the person to work with any
individuals with different backgrounds. Most of the time, teamwork coordination
is required especially when dealing with a large project, which is important as
it involves huge amount of money. Careful planning and management is required
to accomplish the projects. Unethical people will render the project
uncompleted or full of flaws. Coordination of teamwork will fail and thus
affecting the outcome of the huge amount of money. For example, in a meeting, a
person with knowledge of ethics may be able to express his or her idea in a
constructive form while accepting ideas from another person. Vice versa, a
person without ethics may give their opinions but may attack other people’s
opinion and ideas in order to uphold their own. In turn, this will jeopardize
the meeting or even fail them.
As we know that any work must be
done in an ethical manner, so that the work is of a high level of accuracy and
quality. IT professionals must have knowledge of the ethics of work, where the
responsibility lies on them to produce an efficient work.
For example, making and developing software
require from the developers the awareness of ethics and to realize the duties
in the design stages, so they don’t take the opportunity to find a program to
harm users; and thus the damage is done to the environment in which they
operates.
Ethics in the work is not only limited in the
case of the development of a particular program or to perform the task
concerned, but should be the mainstay for these professionals to be working in
its required level. For this, lack of knowledge of the need for ethics in the
workplace and in life is possible factor that causes the workflow to stop.
However, if the worker only depends on doing
the job without looking at the meaning of the great speech which covered
ethics, or is not aware of the meaning of this word will not be able to reach
the target set for him, and he will not be able to deliver his work as
expected. Hence, IT professionals need to take into account that ethics should
sprung from inside because it lead to the success in life work.
Ethics is important in our daily life to act
properly toward the behavior of the social society. In the organization the
ethic become part of it. It improves the performance and credibility of an
organization and keep the harmony in balance. It became part of the organization
culture. There are also some of the organization focus the list of the ethical
value that are to be followed by the staff to stress on the safe and ethical
working environment. Employees need to know how company views these values,
just as they need to know what ideals company consider being important.
The organization has to define a set of values
which represent the ethical ideals of that company and identify it. Employers
need to consider the ethical workspace of their staff by establishing
confidential arrangements for ‘whistle blowing’ independent of the normal chain
of command, including ethical evaluations into formal performance assessment
processes, including ethical evaluations into formal performance assessment
processes, including ethical standards into employee hiring, employment
contracts and training, make sure there is adequate planning, training and
ethical performance monitoring when implementing change.
According to RICS core values, every member is
expected to have a set of central values. This included are an act with
integrity that never put your own gain above the welfare of your clients or
others to whom you have a professional responsibility. Respect their
confidentiality at all times and always consider the wider interests of society
in your judgments. Always be honest and trustworthy in all that you do and be
open and transparent to share the full facts with your client to make things as
intelligible as possible. It is a must to be accountable in which we need to
take a full responsibility for every of your actions, and never to blame others
if things go wrong but instead to cope with the problems professionally.
In RICS also added that, we need to act within
your limitation so that we are aware of our limits of our competence and not to
tempted to work beyond these. It is always good to practically treat others
with respect and never to discriminate against others regardless of their
background and status. With that highlighted, we need to have the courage to
make a stand to be prepared to act if you suspect a risk to safety or
malpractice of any sort. Lastly in the values, it encourage us to set a
positive and good example in which we should never put aside to remember both
your public and private behavior as it could affect us and other members’
reputations.
In an organization, studying ethics and its
code of conduct aid in improving the performance and workforce of the company.
Our society respects an organization which is driven by moral values, even if
the field of the company is unknown to many. Ethics may help in the creating a ‘goodwill’
of a company.
Decision making is very important in an IT
company or field. Decisions of a person are driven by his or her values. For
example, an organization which does not follow the code of ethics dedicated to
the company will try to crush its competitors and monopolize the business in
the market.
Lastly, proper education of ethics will
definitely help to protect individuals in the IT profession from harm because
it encourages fairness and honesty. Every graduated student may want to work in
a company or organization which practices fairness and ethics. Employee can
work comfortably, not facing any misconduct from other fellow employees. In
turn, this will contribute better for the company or organization.
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