Future IT Practitioner : Ethics

Ethics in a profession will describe professional behavior among professionals. Further it will describes an individual’s behavior towards to his or her profession. Because misbehaving of few professional will disrupt the profession as whole. Hence professional bodies like BCS, IEEE defines “Code of Ethics” for their members.

In both “Code of Ethics” we can see common areas they tried to address.

1. Public Safety
   We have responsibilities to protect the public in many ways. Special due care should be paid for designing, developing and maintaining critical systems.
   Therac -25  and London ambulance service failure  are two incidents that come into play.
2. Avoid Discriminations
   This is a wide area to talk about but, basically we should not less favorable because of race, skin colour, religion etc.
3. Professional Obligations
   Here it addresses, our competency level, integrity with other professionals ,avoiding conflict of interest etc.
4. Legal Obligations
   This has wide scope that will differ from country to country. But we should know legal legislations for the country that we are going work with. Examples for common legislations of misusing computers, regarding confidential information, discriminations , consumer protection etc.

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Code of ethics of
+ BCS http://www.bcs.org/server.php?show=nav.6030
+ IEEE http://www.ieee.org/portal/pages/iportals/aboutus/ethics/code.html

Copyrights © Kelum Ganegoda 2009

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