Professional IT Practice and Ethics

Professional IT practice and Ethics 1
Professional IT Practice and Ethics
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Professional IT practice and Ethics 2
Introduction
Information and communications Technology department otherwise known as ICT department
has been known for controversies owing to its concerns in security and even issues related to
ethics. Due to this, ethical theories within this industry have emerged. These usually serve the
purpose of maintaining very clear standards and morality stand within the industries. Ethics
refers to “moral standards helping people to direct their behavior, choices and even actions”. In
my paper I intend to look at the ethical theories and their relevance to the IT industry. I also
intend to compare and contrast the different ethical theories and look at how they relate to
professional codes of ethics and practice. I would also look at how these theories applies to the
social media and also provide examples. Finally I will look at how they help to assist with
resolving an ethical question (Bayo-Moriones, Billón & Lera-López, 2013 p.78).
Rights Vs virtue
Rights theory mainly focuses on protection of the rights that are recognized by a society. It is
important to observe the rights since a larger group of the population or otherwise collectively
taken to be the society endorses these rights (García-Muñiz & Vicente, 2014 p.67). This theory
usually states that “there are things one can never do against folks as these persons usually bear
these rights.” Possession of a right refers to possession of some unique protection. An
individual’s right according to ethics must always be defended and must never be frustrated no
matter the reason. The theory is also applicable to social media. Since social media provides a
platform where individuals can interact and share content, the users should posses the right to
express themselves without any fear. For example, a social media platform like twitter would
give the users a chance to address other users within the platform.

Professional IT practice and Ethics 3
However, the main shortcoming of this theory is that an individual may find it impossible to
settle on finding what immoral until a person has an idea of what the rights of a particular society
entails (Kiveu & Ofafa, 2013 p.76).The rights are being determined by a society hence making it
necessary to combine this theory with another one which decides on particular objective of a
society.
Virtue theory
In this theory, an individual is normally judged via their character instead of their actions which
are normally prone to change as time goes by. While evaluating the normal behavior of an
individual, one usually considers according to this theory, an individual’s status, morals and
inspiration. It is thus a theory based on the action of the individual (Lurie & Mark, 2016). This
theory however does not consider the possibility of an individual’s moral character changing.
This then makes it a very difficult task in determining the divergence from a person’s normal
character and behavior. The theory makes it very possible to be able to know the character of
individuals in a social media setting. The character could always be predicted through the posts
of the individual. For example, an individual who is kind could always be seen posting messages
that contain kind words. In most cases, the user would be careful not to use words that hurt other
users within the platform.
In contrast to the rights theory, the virtues theory is not based on an individual rather than a
group of persons (Rienties & Townsend, 2012 p.89). That is to say that, the rights theory is
unanimous or common to a group of people rather than an individual’s action.
Relativist vs. objectivists
Relativist theory usually embraces the fact that morality of an individual depends on the custom
of the original society of the individual. It also embraces the fact that a behavior may always be