Discussion on Information Technology and Ethical Dilemmas

This discussion post examines ethical dilemmas in the context of information technology (IT) projects, focusing on the challenges faced by project managers. The analysis delves into a case study involving software development, highlighting issues such as prioritizing public interest, honesty, competence, and professionalism according to the ACS Code of Professional Conduct. The discussion explores the ethical implications of decisions made during the project lifecycle, such as outsourcing code testing, and their impact on stakeholders. Furthermore, it provides suggestions for addressing these ethical concerns, including the importance of communication, transparency, and adherence to ethical guidelines. The post emphasizes the critical role of ethical considerations in IT project management and offers recommendations for IT professionals to navigate complex ethical decisions, ensuring responsible and sustainable practices. The work includes references and concludes with a summary of the key ethical considerations.

Running head: DISCUSSION ON INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY AND ETHICS
Discussion on information technology and ethics
Name of the student:
Name of the university:
Author Note

1DISCUSSION ON INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY AND ETHICS
Executive summary
Ethical problems in a project upsurge as any psychological fight in mind is seen. Further, this occurs
under challenging circumstances as the results are made between specific opportunities. This
happens in the room where the verdicts are precise and incompatible to others. Moreover, the
selection can take place between the twofold possibilities that give birth to ethical difficulties. Again,
under Information Communication Technology, this is seen to be playing dynamic parts. These
dilemmas are commonly witnessed by project managers for the situation of ICT. In this report, those
ethical dilemmas coming out from the particular project developing is demonstrated.

2DISCUSSION ON INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY AND ETHICS
Table of Contents
Introduction:..........................................................................................................................................3
Understanding the background:.............................................................................................................3
Discussion of the ethical dilemma of project managers:.......................................................................4
Analyzing the ACS Code of Professional Conduct for an IT company:...............................................4
Discussion on ACS Code of Professional Conduct:..............................................................................5
Some of the suggestions for the present case:.......................................................................................6
Conclusion:............................................................................................................................................7
References:............................................................................................................................................8

3DISCUSSION ON INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY AND ETHICS
Introduction:
The ethical concerns in any project rise as any mental conflict are seen. This happens in
complex situations as the decisions are made between some options and in the place where the
decisions are correct and conflicting to others. The choice takes place between the two possibilities
giving rise to ethical problems. In ICT or Information Communication Technology, ethics has been
playing vital roles. The ethical dilemmas have been frequently faced by managers, particularly the
case of the ICT (Wang et al., 2017). An essential element of any profession is the necessity for the
employees to abide by the code of ethics. As far as ACS is concerned, the code is implemented in
the form of the code regarding professional conduct. It has remained as one of the elements of
regulation of society. The rules apply to ACS members working at various areas of ICT. Apart from
that, the code has been involved in determining six core ethical values along with miscellaneous
related requirements regarding professional conduct. Moreover, society needs the members to follow
the benefit. Besides, they require to act with integrity along with the responsibility at various aspects
of their dealings as far as their professional life is concerned. The following study determines the
ethical dilemmas during specific project development.
Understanding the background:
The client has asked to make some changes in the software as provided from the side of the
company. The project managers ask the developer in such cases to forward calls to him. As a
consequence, managers stop the process of development. He also screams at the junior development.
He set up the change control board. Then, he meets clients for reaching consensus over their initial
requirements. Next, the contract gets updated. Further, it is seen that the project manager is
encouraging action of the developers.

4DISCUSSION ON INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY AND ETHICS
Discussion of the ethical dilemma of project managers:
Commonly, the project managers face problems that are never simply solved by any
knowledge or theory gained from any formal training. Those kinds of problems are never commonly
technical and frequently tends to be human resources or ethical issues. Here, any kinds of
satisfactory response are debatable and might suit any set of situations and never the other. This is
the complex problem in that place where the project manager should draw from different sort of
practical experiences, various type of ethical and moral obligations. At many times it has included
the rule of laws (Tavani, 2016). This is vital for project managers in approaching the complex
problems with proper care, along with conducting affairs under the suitable legal and ethical
framework. Those guiding principle could also be gained the statements of company value and the
code of conducts. It provides project managers with experiences and extra resources for solving
complex situations (Novo et al., 2017).
Analyzing the ACS Code of Professional Conduct for an IT company:
One can place the interest of the public more than the sectional, business or personal interest.
Thus, IT professionals must get paid from the side of public interest. That is the work mainly paid
through sectional interests and business. As the interest of any business service has been a concern
of lively debate, till the initial approximation, business management is intended to be the act under
shareholder interest and the law (Whitaker, 2016). Although senior management are the
technologists and as per practice, this has been cultural along with legal compulsion of upper-level
management, taken seriously under professional obligations for applying to the IT professionals. As
per individual perspective, the business has been acting such that they are damaging to wider society
with the interest of shareholders. There are some organizations also that have management for
ethical reasons have been choosing to avoid specific activities of the business (Quinn, 2017).

5DISCUSSION ON INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY AND ETHICS
Nonetheless, under the economy of the free market, that is legal and whether there is a dollar, few
businesses can attempt to collect the dollar. Most of the Australian IT professionals have been
working in roles. For them, there has been no institutional gatekeeper of any type, legal and others
(Galvão et al., 2017).
Discussion on ACS Code of Professional Conduct:
Guidelines of ACS code of professional conduct relate to associates working in spaces of
ICT. The selected case study is evaluated on the base of 6 ethical core values in the followings
section of the ACS code of conduct for finding ethical problems. Firstly, the primacy of the public
interest is to be considered. The code delivers the preference towards public interest on personal
interest, private and sectional essentials. As per the code, the business should discuss with their
clients before sending the software for testing codes. Whenever it is seen, they fail to follow the
codes of the primacy of public interest indicates the unethical behaviour for the clients. Here, they
are able to play with the emotions of their clients through sending software for the testing overseas.
Thus it can be said that practices of business are unethical as per the basic public interests (Capurro,
2018). Secondly, the enhancement of life’s quality is to be considered. These adverse problems arise
because of the development of ICT solutions to get effectively overcome through utilizing the code
of conducts. As per the enhancement of life’s quality the central valuation of ACS, it can be said that
the professional must be knowing and respecting stakeholders’ views affected by their works. Here,
the senior developer is unable to understand the view of a software developer working within tight
schedules (Pheng, 2018). This personal satisfaction of the clients is affected negatively as the
software is sent to any third party for testing of code. In this way, the practices are unethical.
Thirdly, honesty is to be considered. As per the core value, this is unethical in breaching the trust of

6DISCUSSION ON INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY AND ETHICS
the stakeholder in the profession. Moreover, the senior development never consults with the clients
with the overseas testing of code affecting the client’s trust in the organization (Capurro, 2018).
Next, competence is to be considered. As per the code, the professionals should never
misrepresent skills and knowledge. In this case, the senior developers can decide to work on three
distinct versions of the product despite any discussion with clients showing unethical behaviours of
the senior developer for the clients. Next, the professionalism is to be considered. As per the chosen
code, suitable actions are to be taken against the professionals abiding the professional code. For the
present case, the project managers must be abiding professional code since they never stop the senior
developer from sending the code of software for the third party for the testing to be done overseas
(Thomas, 2017). Moreover, there is professional development. As per the code of conduct, in the
present case, the professionals should be keeping themselves aware of the latest standards,
technologies and practices related to the works. This is important for the professionals in spreading
the awareness of the problems affecting their profession. For the present case, the senior developers
are unable to follow the code of conduct since they never attempt to discuss the entire matter with
clients showing unethical behaviours (Burgess, 2019).
In the present case study, honesty from the code of conduct is essential for the project
manager. They must never mislead their potential client and understand to make a distinction
between the personal and professional device and opinions and qualify professional opinions known
to be based on limited experiences and knowledge.
Some of the suggestions for the present case:
It is suggested the business scan hire more human resources. This will be helpful to get their
software products to be tested within the company despite any sending of the code to the third

7DISCUSSION ON INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY AND ETHICS
parties. With this, it is also proposed that project managers must discuss the overall matter with
clients for making more time for the development of software (Dalcher, 2016).
Conclusion:
There are various ethical lines seen in project managers. More prominent the project, more
scopes come out for the companies and people for comprising the ethics with the determination to
bring the project within estimated budget and on time. Nonetheless, as the project managers along
with the other stakeholders have been changing blind eye towards questionable activities, outcomes
have been commonly disastrous having the legal level of troubles, criminal charges and blown
budgets as common for the present-day business scenario. On being the project manager, people are
found to be facing complicated ethical decisions in promptly manner. Irrespective of the fact one
hold the PMP certification, the PMI Code of Ethics delivers the helpful common guide for ethical
project management with decision making. It can be concluded by stating that as per the ACS code
of conducts, the organizations' practices are against the ethics. Besides, the study also provides
suitable recommendations to be provided to the present company restricting then to perform various
unethical kind of practices. Though the body like ACS has been seeking the de-facto role of
gatekeeper with the credentials to attain the cachet of employment, this is difficult to see the
workable way. The work of IT has been tending towards hyper-specialization and they have been
continuing to evolve quicker than the institutions can keep up.

8DISCUSSION ON INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY AND ETHICS
References:
Burgess, J. T. (2019). Principles and Concepts in Information Ethics. Foundations of Information
Ethics, 1.
Capurro, R. (2018). Intercultural information ethics. In Localizing the Internet (pp. 19-38). Wilhelm
Fink Verlag.
Capurro, R. (2018). Why Information Ethics? 1. International Journal of Applied Research on
Information Technology and Computing, 9(1), 50-52.
Dalcher, D. (2016). Ethics Project Ethics and Professionalism: The Making of a Profession?. In
Advances in Project Management (pp. 129-134)..
Galvão, G. D. A., Abadia, L. G., Parizzotto, L., Pião, R. D. C. S., & de Carvalho, M. M. (2017,
December). Compliance and ethics for project management governance. In ECMLG 2017
13th European Conference on Management, Leadership and Governance: ECMLG 2017 (p.
115).
Novo, B., Landis, E. A., & Haley, M. L. (2017). Leadership and its role in the success of project
management. Journal of Leadership, Accountability and Ethics, 14(1).
Pheng, L. S. (2018). Project Ethics and Professional Conduct. In Project Management for the Built
Environment (pp. 195-201). Singapore.
Quinn, M. J. (2017). Ethics for the information age. Pearson.
Tavani, H. T. (2016). Ethics and technology. Wiley.

9DISCUSSION ON INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY AND ETHICS
Thomas, J. (2017). Place, information technology and legal ethics (Doctoral dissertation, University
of Southern Queensland).
Wang, J., Keil, M., Oh, L. B., & Shen, Y. (2017). Impacts of organizational commitment,
interpersonal closeness, and Confucian ethics on willingness to report bad news in software
projects. Journal of Systems and Software, 125, 220-233.
Whitaker, S. (2016). Ethics and professional conduct. In Pass the PMP® Exam (pp. 475-494).
Apress, Berkeley, CA.