The XXII self-assessment: the ethics of computing

Reviewer: James Clinton Spohrer

The application of ethics in the computer industry is difficult for several reasons: (1) computer-mediated communications, such as electronic mail, alter relationships among people; (2) information stored electronically can be manipulated (for example, copied, distributed, accessed, or utilized) in fundamentally different ways than printed information; (3) efforts to keep information confidential conflict with the potentially larger benefit of sharing information; (4) the authenticity of easily manipulated electronic information is suspect; (5) as a field, the computer industry is relatively young; and (6) as computers proliferate, the boundary between professionals and skilled amateurs is blurred. This paper includes a copy of the ACM code of professional ethics and a series of scenarios describing ethical dilemmas. Readers are invited to work through the scenarios to help them explore and develop their ability to make decisions that are consistent with their own personal code of professional conduct. The 15 scenarios deal with a wide variety of situations including a computer scientist accepting a grant on a possibly unachievable program, a computer hacker accessing commercial computer services, computer users sharing software inadvertently, programmers using other programs as models for their own products, instructors using students to test instructional software, and an information security manager monitoring electronic mail. Readers can compare their responses and reasoning about the scenarios to those obtained from a panel. All computer professionals may find this paper valuable.