Ethical Standards of Computing Professionals

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Computing professionals are called to act in strict accordance with high ethical standards. Three predominant sources of ethical standards exist for computing professionals. The IEEE, ACM, and Software Engineering Code of Ethics each provide standards for ethical behavior to guide computing professionals both inside and outside of the workplace. These collections of moral imperatives will be used to ethically assess the following scenario.
Diane Jones is a computing professional who owns and operates a consulting business. Diane is designing a database management system for a client. Throughout the design process Diane has involved the CEO, director of computing, and the director of personnel from the client firm. Diane presented the client with several options regarding the level of security to be implemented into the database management system. Due to cost constraints, the client has elected to proceed with the least secure option. Diane feels strongly that this leaves the system vulnerable to attacks by either enterprising employees or Internet based hackers.
The stakeholders in this situation are the client’s CEO, the client’s director of computing, the client’s director of personnel, the client’s employees, Diane, and the employees of Diane’s company. An ethical dilemma places the client’s immediate desires in conflict with Diane’s ethical obligations to the client, the client’s employees, and herself. As a computing professional Diane has a responsibility to her client to produce a high-quality product that will protect their property and reputation. Diane has a responsibility to the client’s employees to build a system with adequate safeguards to protect their personal information stored within the database management sys...

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...afford payment for sufficient security, then Diane must make a difficult decision. If Diane is unwilling to accept full responsibility for insufficient security in the database management system, then she must not proceed with the project. Failure to implement sufficient security could potentially harm all of the stakeholders. Diane’s refusal to build such a system would ultimately protect the interests of each stakeholder.

Works Cited

"Code of Ethics, IEEE." IEEE. IEEE. Web. 9 Nov 2013.
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"Software Engineering Code of Ethics and Professional Practice." ACM.
Association for Computing Machinery. Web. 9 Nov 2013.
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"Code of Ethics, ACM." ACM. Association for Computing Machinery, 17 Oct 1992.
Web. 10 Nov 2013 .

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