IT 6202: Social Issues and Professional Practice

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Module 2: Ethics and Ethical Responsibilities

Module 2: Ethics and Ethical Responsibilities

Course Learning Outcomes:

By the end of this module, a student is able to:
1. Define ethics and determine its role in society
2. Enumerate and determine the differences of each ethical theory
3. Determine the differences between ethical reasoning and ethical
decision making.
4. Determine the Ethical and Moral implications of Ethical
Responsibilities

Every human society, whether civilized or primitive, practices ethics because every
society attaches a value on an individual’s actions, on a continuum of good to bad, right to
wrong, according to where that individual’s actions fall within the domain of that society’s
rules and canons.

Ethics
The origin of ethics traces back to ancient civilizations, back when the Greeks' desire
and curiosity to learn about themselves, the human life, and society that led to the
examination of all human conducts.
The word ethics comes from an ancient Greek word eché, which means character. This
part of philosophy focuses on the theoretical examination of morality and as an equivalent
of the theory of morals. Therefore, ethics can be defined as the study of right and wrong in
human conduct.
Ethics helps us not only in distinguishing between right and wrong but also in
knowing why and on what grounds our judgment of human actions is justified. Ethics,
therefore, is a field of inquiry whose subject is human actions, collectively called human
conduct, which are performed consciously and willfully and for which one can be held
responsible.

Ethical Theories
The purpose of ethics is to interpret human conduct, acknowledging and
distinguishing between right and wrong. The interpretation is done based on
a system that uses a process of argumentation consisting of a mixture of
inductions and deductions. These are called ethical theories and are
developed, tested, revised, and debated by philosophers and elders in different
society.

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It consist of different kinds of Ethical Theory:

1. Consequentialism
- It states that human actions are judged good or bad, right or
wrong, depending on the results of such actions—a desirable
result denotes a good action and vice versa.
- There are three commonly discussed types of consequentialism
theory:
 Egoism - it puts an individual’s interests and happiness
above everything else.
 Utilitarianism - puts a group’s interest and happiness
above those of an individual, for the good of many. Thus,
an action is good if it benefits the maximum number of
people. Among the forms of utilitarianism are the
following:
- Act utilitarianism: when a person tells one to
consider seriously the consequences of all
actions before choosing the one with the best
overall advantage.
- Rule utilitarianism - when a person one to
obey those rules that bring the maximum
happiness to the greatest number of people
 Altruism - it is when an action is right if the consequences
of that action are favorable to all except the actor.

2. Deontology
- It is a theory that does not concern itself with the consequences
of the action but rather with the will of the action. Therefore, an
act is considered good if the individual committing it had a good
reason to do so.

3. Human Nature
- The theory considers human beings as endowed with all
faculties and capabilities to live in happiness and in turn those
capabilities become a benchmark for actions, and those actions
are then gauged and judged on how much they measure up to
those capabilities.

4. Relativism
- It is negatively formulated, denying the existence of universal
moral norms. It takes right and wrong to be relative to society,
culture, or the individual.

5. Hedonism
- It claims that pleasure is the only good thing in human life, the
end of life as the highest good.

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Module 2: Ethics and Ethical Responsibilities

- There are two types of hedonism:

 Psychological hedonism - it claims that in fact what
people seek in their everyday actions is pleasure.
 Ethical hedonism - it claims that people ought to seek
pleasure and that pleasure is the moral good.

6. Emotivism - the theory maintains that ethical statements are neither

true nor false and cannot be proven; they are really only statements
about how someone feels. Although over the years and in different
places changing values have been attached to human actions, these
ethical theories have remained relatively unchanged. This means that
although ethics as a discipline is evolving, ethical reasoning has
relatively remained the same.

Ethical Reasoning and Decision Making

Both reasoning and logic are important elements in daily human interactions.
Reasoning is a human cognitive process of looking for ways to
generate or affirm a proposition. The cognitive processes stated in the
definition covers mental functions or activities that are grouped based
on:
 experience interpretation
 foreseeing
 ordering
 analyzing
 valuing
 making connections
Logic is the tool for distinguishing between truth and falseness.

Human beings, on a daily basis, engage in reasoning and logic to achieve the
desire results from a problem or an issue. This may be in the form of various
ethical or moral decisions ranging from simple ones like having to lie about a
spouse’s choice of dressing to hard ones like contributing to an abortion
campaign. Both reasoning and logic are important in decision making.

In real life, especially in professional life or in whatever career an individual

possesses, ethical problems will be ever present and each has needs solutions.
Many real-life problems have systematic structures on which the search for a
solution is based. There are some in which solutions can be found in the form
of algorithms and empirical models; especially for cases where no
mathematical formula can be used.

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Module 2: Ethics and Ethical Responsibilities

But that is not the case with ethical problems. Since it is not like problems in a
structured environment, where there are rules to follow, the solutions are
found through a process, or series of steps, which often leads to an ethically
justified resolution of the problem.
At most the decision-making process is developed that individuals tend to
execute automatically without thinking about the steps that go through. For
the majority, the process generally follows the steps outlined in Figure 1.

Figure 1. Decision Making Process

There are four other characteristics that define a moral system Ethical
reasoning either brings a resolution to an ethical problem or, at worst, helps
to deepen our understanding of the ethical problem which may eventually lead
to the resolution of the problem at a future date.

NOTE: Ethical reasoning is when ethical principles is integrated in the

reasoning process while ethical decision making is the process of making
a decision which may result in one or more moral conflicts.

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Module 2: Ethics and Ethical Responsibilities

Ethical Responsibilities

Whistle-Blowing
The term whistle-blowing gives the impression of an act of seeking public attention.
This is derived from the action witnessed during sports event whenever a foul is committed.
The referee blows a whistle to call public attention, including that of the athlete, to the
unsportsmanlike act committed. In some countries, law enforcement personnel use whistles
to draw public attention to what they deem unlawful acts and to seek help.
The purpose of whistle-blowing in the workplace and the goal of a whistleblower are
the same as that in the sports arena — calling to public attention, including especially to that
of a higher authority such as a government, what is considered an illegal or mismanaged act.
Whistle-blowing can be internal, in which case the attention is sought internally and remains
within organizational channels, or it can be public, in which case it alerts everyone.
Everyday people, especially employees, witness wrongdoing on the job. It is usually
acts that can jeopardize not only their health, safety, or lives but the well-being of others.
However, instead of receiving praise for such brave actions and high integrity, whistle-
blowers are often targeted for retaliatory acts such as investigations, ridicule, blacklisting
(especially in their trade), harassment, intimidation, demotion, and sometimes outright
dismissal. Therefore, the most important aspect of whistle-blowing is to remain anonymous.
Different whistle-blowing methods have been used for years, ranging from traditional
ones to more modern computer-aided ones.

Computer-Aided Methods
Most common methods are anonymous, including anonymous remailers that
use a software program to take an original e-mail and strip its header and all
other identifying data before forwarding it to its destination. Because the
remailer does not include any return address on the e-mail, it attaches a
pseudonymous address in case you need a reply.
Before using anonymous remailers, however, exercise caution because the
authorities can force the server administrator to reveal the owner of the
pseudonymous name and address in cases of emergencies and other coercion.

Traditional Methods
There is a cross section of traditional methods used in whistle-blowing.
Historically, whistle-blowing has used spy-like methods to pass on
information to either the public or a higher authority. All methods that ensure
anonymity can be used; the most common methods include face-to-face
communication with a public person that will ensure anonymity; talking with
the news media, which can keep keeping ones identity a secret; hotlines that
alert the caller identity; and writing letters.

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Whistle-blowing has been praised by many as courageous actions taken by a few good
people with a moral conscience who risk everything to call public attention to illegitimate
business practices and illegal and immoral actions. Others have condemned whistle-blowing
as acts of vendetta, revenge, and greed that should not be encouraged. In fact, most whistle-
blowers are either fired employees or unhappy ones.

Harassment and Discrimination

Harassment. This is the act of verbally or physically creating an environment that is

hostile, intimidating, offensive, severe, pervasive, or abusive based on a
number of parameters including one’s race, religion, sex, sexual orientation,
national origin, age, disability, political affiliation, marital status, citizenship,
or physical appearance.
Discrimination. This is a process of making decisions that negatively affect an
individual, such as denial of a service, based wholly, or partly, upon the real or
perceived facts of one’s race, religion, sex, sexual orientation, national origin,
age, disability, political affiliation, marital status, or physical appearance.
Harassment and discrimination are serious breaches of human rights. In fact,
harassment is a form of discrimination. If not attended to, harassment does not only affect a
few individuals, but it eventually grows to affect everyone in the organization.

Ethical and Moral Implications

The act of whistle-blowing is meant to alert and call the public to be witnesses to
illegal acts that may be hazardous to their health and well-being or to waste of public
resources.
Even people with high moral standards can be prevented from doing what is morally
right because of the privileges, rights, and freedoms they stand to lose within the
organization if they become known. People who feel accused and those allied to them tend
to hit back to deflect attention from the accused. So a would-be whistle-blower either decides
to stay in line and live with a moral dilemma, but survive, or resign and live with a clear
conscience.
However, whistle-blowing is morally justifiable when the activities involved pose
serious danger and harm to human life. The moral concept of whistle-blowing is good; it
helps those who dare not speak out and all others who are affected.
Harassment and discrimination are both evil acts that challenge not only the
conscious of an individual doing the acts, but also they create a situation that brings
discomfort and inferiority to the targeted individual. It is, however, unfortunate that most
individuals perpetuating the acts of discrimination and harassment lack the moral conviction
and conscience.

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References:
1. Kizza, Joseph Migga ; 2013; Ethical and Social Issues in the Information Age (Fifth
Edition); London; Springer-Verlag;
2. Tavani, Herman T.; 2013; Ethics And Technology : Controversies, Questions, And
Strategies For Ethical Computing; New Jersey, USA; John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
3. George Reynolds (2018) Ethics in Information Technology / Edition 6

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