Professional Ethics In Information System

Published Date: 02 Nov 2017

Abstract: Ethics in information system involves of principle, standard and guideline of the moral and value that cover all aspect of life. Professional ethics is referring to the concept of what professional should and should not do in completing their job that related to the society. A professional ethics code has been used in all fields. Every professional must follow the professional codes of ethics so that their working life will become harmony. This paper has specifically focused on the professional who involves of academic, practitioners and also students. Professional involves in acceptance of responsibility to the public. Through this term paper, it is discussed on the conflict or dilemma that professional faced regarding to the professional ethics.

Keywords: Ethics, Professional Ethics, Ethical conflict.

Introduction

Ethical involves in all professions. It is included the professional that already in the profession or for those who wanted to enter to the profession. The development of information and technology environment make the professional ethics become more important and tend to become more complex and hard from a year to year. According to Abey (2011) from a website hubpages.com, ‘ethics’ is defined as the philosophy study of moral values and rules meanwhile, ‘professional’ is refer to the type of job that requires a special training that could brings a fairly high status. Professional ethics concept involves of what a professional should or should not do to any related work that they does in an occupation and how it related towards the society.

Professional ethics help the professional to make decision making when they faced with the work problem in moral issue. The action that the professional takes will be adjudged upon the individual perceptions in daily activities in work place or interrelation among the outsider. The issue that arises in professional ethics is about the code of professional ethics. There is professional that still unaware about the code of ethics and just perform their duty that focuses on services, teaching or scholarly. The professional should not only focus in their duties but they are also need to maintain the competence in their specialized fields. Besides that, the professional code of ethics will assist in decision that professional will make. This is because professional codes ethics serve as guideline to pursue knowledge and awareness.

There are numerous books that publish about ethics and information technology. There is varying of journal articles that covers this topic. The topic may cover many issue of ethical included: Khalil and Seleim (2011); Cobbin and Farrell (2000); Mansoor Al-Ali (2008); Jefferson and Contreras (2005) and Camunale, Sexton and Gara (2006).

In this term paper discuss some issue in professional ethics that covers in conflict or dilemma that face by the professional.

Methodology

In completing this term paper, primary and secondary literatures are used to enable in depth understanding of ethics and professional ethics. In order to increase knowledge about the topics in ethics and especially in professional ethics, the use of articles in completing this term paper is necessary. This is because, in some article that related to this topic, it can be show that on what method of collecting data they had been used in making the research. For example, an observation and survey had been conducted in collecting the primary data. By having surveying, the real problem could be realized and found. For example, in an article written by Sami W. Tabsh (2012) in the article entitles "Faculty response to ethical issues at an American university in the Middle-East" it is found that about one-third of the faculty participants were unaware of the university’s code of ethics. In other articles, the respondents participate in the survey that had been conducted. Besides that, the uses of internet base such as website is also helps in added the information. The source of information should be clear and can be trust.

Definitions and concepts of Ethics and Professional ethics

There are various definitions of ethics from different perspective. However, all the definition and concept of ethics is still the same which is serving as a guide in doing action. Ethics can be defined as the study of moral values or principles that can guide and conduct a person with the right and wrong behavior. It can be relate with the duty and responsibility that lead a person to doing right from wrong, and doing right and good work. As stated in an article written by Cranston (2006), struggle school leaders faced a dilemma and the forces at play as they seek to resolve not about "right" versus "wrong", but "right" versus "right" option. This is also related to the decision that professional need to make and ethics will guide to become reason why to take the action good or bad.

Meanwhile, for the professional ethics is referring to what professional should or should not do in their workplace. It concern on one behavior and practice when doing professional work. It is also a set of rule that can conduct, transactions and relate to the profession and its publics. The action that a professional take in day to day activities in their workplace or outside the workplace will affect other individual perception. According to website toolbox.com, if a professional is to have ethics then that person needs to adopt that conduct in all of his dealings. There are also countries that have their websites professional codes of ethics in conducting them in workplace such as IEEE.

There are also concepts in professional code of ethics such as professional respect, avoidance of dishonest or fraud activities and the professional development of the individual. (1) Professional respect is more to moral concept in doing job with integrity. It is more to attitude and compromises that professional take while completing the job. There are two form of respect which is recognition and appraisal. Recognition is when give some respect to other people and respect the right of other people also. Appraisal is properly valuing ourselves on how well we face moral standard. Some people deserve higher respect. (2) Avoidance of dishonest or fraud activities is also need for integrity. Honesty includes the aspect of truthfulness and trustworthiness. It is important not to steal, manipulate, mislead other, tell lies, and hide the evidence, biases and do not to interfere with confidential information of our client. For example, in the article written by Comunale (2006), the authors said that the accounting scandals that occur by the accountant professional is because of the accounting profession experienced arguably the deepest crisis in its history with the discovery that accountants has acquiesced in monumental fraudulent financial reporting by corporate giants such as Enron, WorldCom, Tyco and others. The authors investigate on the reaction of the accounting student about the ethical crisis. (3) Professional development of the individual is about encourage the individual that tend to face with danger and difficult in doing job. They must be encouraged in rational ways and self control.

Professional Ethics Concept

Table 1: Professional Ethics Concept

Concept

Description

Honesty

Professional treats individuals with the utmost respect. Besides that, at all times professional will communicate and act with fairness.

Integrity

Professional does not engage in behavior that evades responsibility. Behaving ethically and responsibly is the fabric of their professionalism.

Professionalism

Professional prides them with being expert in their field and by doing what they commit to clients to do, in the timeframes that they have agreed.

Challenges/ conflict in Encouraging Professional Ethics Behaviors Among Information System Profession

In professional ethics, there are some cases have to do with conflicts. There are several common challenges or conflicts in professional ethical that has been identified. The conflicts are also known as moral dilemma.

Resistance to change attitudes and behaviors

It is always happen to the senior worker. They are comfortable with the old style of doing work. Some of the working style that they follow had been change. The old version of working style may be wrong but the professional is hard to change their attitudes and behaviors. So, they just follow the old version of working style. By that, the professional cannot develop and improve their knowledge and skills.

Conflict of interest

This challenges may be occurs when the professional faced with the clash between human life and the environment. The conflict happen when the clash between profession duties and personal interests. The professional faced difficulty in resolving the conflict. It is involve of decision making that can make others employee position affected by power that the professional obtain to his or her own benefit. This conflict could involve of law because the action that the professional take can overlap with the law.

Protect against own decision making

There is variety of professional code of ethics. It serves as a guideline in decision making process. The professional could follow the guideline in order to make a decision. It is not to replace law but the codes could limit the acceptable of action that professional takes regarding the right or wrong in their work. The guideline will assist the professional’s decision. Some of professional are confusing in making decision. For the professional, they must protect on their own decision making because all matters arising watch by others. The decisions that the professional take convince with the right and must be decrease the risk in occupation. If there is any resistance, the professional need to be honest in doing his or her duty and not neglected the problem that occurs. For example, if there any employees that have wrong doing activities, the professional must take an action. They must take an action and protect their own decision that follows the guideline. The professional must think on responsibility, ethically and legally.

Relationship between colleagues

Relationship between colleagues is also included in codes of ethics. The professional must be respect, supportive, cooperative, commitment, and helpful without unhealthy competition. Competition among colleagues is good but it must be honest in order to complete work. Besides that, the professional must respect on others colleagues’ idea. It is important not interfere with the colleagues confidential information. In order to have respect on other colleagues, the professional should treat all colleagues as professional in their own right. Then, they will treat like that back.

Maintain the professionalism

As the professional, it is necessary to maintain the professional standard. This is because, minimum standards of professionalism will meet the feeling of guilty for any wrong doing occupation. The professional should perform services in the area of their competence. The professional needs to make an improvement in their professional knowledge and skills as it can help in develop their career. The professional need to attend conference, read more literature, go for personal training and so on.

Recommendations to Address the Challenges/ conflicts in Encouraging Professional Ethics Behaviors Among Information System Profession

In response to the challenges and conflict that faced by the professional, several recommendations are proposed as follows:

Self-direction strategy

The professional that hard to change must understand that the changes over the technology also can effect the organization. Top management need to take an action in motivate the employee to understand the important of gaining knowledge in order to have efficient work style. There is need for encourage the employee to use an appropriate standard and procedures as in codes of ethics. This action will make the organization be more effective. The employee could be monitor and observe on their work.

Set specific obligation.

The professional must be clearly reminding themselves to separate between work and personal. They need to take responsibility in taking best action in making decision and not to make a decision based on self interest. The professional must understand their work so that they could not easily break the rule. In taking an action to resolve a problem, they must think deeply and follow the professional codes of ethics. The action that the professional take must minimize risk and avoid the harm of action that has been taken.

Autonomy of making decision based on codes of ethics

All problem that arising need of the decision making process. In order to choose the right decision, the professional must understand the problem and the codes of ethics that they could follow. The professional must have prove and evidence that can support the decision that they will make. The professional codes of ethics can be used to guide if there is any objection. Good decision that the professional take will affect the organization. Besides that, the professional must come up with the alternative in order to resolve the problem. The professional also need to be fair in handling issue.

Perform own duties

The professional must promote the cooperation and good relations among the colleagues in profession. It is important to interchange of information and experience between professionals. Among the professionals, they must respect on other interest and contributions regarding to the occupation. Any personal opinion can be as a criticism. They must tolerate and perform their own job in occupation. It is important to support other employees that have shown great work. Healthy competition in doing work can make the professional work become more focus and details. This can lead to have better job performance. Hence, it is important to deliver good outcomes that can make organization satisfy with the work.

Integrity

Integrity refers as a value. The professional behavior commit with standard and value. To achieve profession’s highest standard, the professional must strive to continue improve the competence and services that they offers. In maintain the integrity the attitude of reasonable compromise is needed. The professional must have the ability to identify reasonable compromise. It is important to separate between work and personal life. Honesty in doing work is also important in having high integrity of work.

Conclusion

Ethics has a large scope of study. It is involves of rule, standard and principle. There are several ethical dilemmas that need for a decision and action to be made. In the term of professional ethics, it is not only involves of academic and practitioners but also students because student also may involves on professional soon. The professional faced different ethical dilemma based on their areas of field. There is may be some professional still unaware and rejected to follow some code of ethics. Professional has responsibility in maintaining professional culture in organization that could follow the value of the professional ethics. Information System profession could apply the ethical code in all country. It is important that professional ethics be standardize to make sure all professional believe and think that professional ethics should apply. They are also may improve and control over information so that effective information could be control.