University IT Ethics: A Reflective Essay on Professional and Society

This reflective essay explores the multifaceted realm of IT ethics and its profound impact on professionals and society. The essay delves into key concepts such as ethical dilemmas, privacy concerns, and the ethical implications of artificial intelligence, including roboethics. It examines the social and ethical aspects of widespread automation, future technologies, and copyright issues within the IT sector. The author reflects on the importance of ethical standards and conduct, emphasizing integrity, accountability, teamwork, and excellence. The essay also touches upon the ethical cultural issues and the role of stakeholders in organizational decision-making. The author acknowledges the influence of lectures, presentations, and class discussions in shaping their understanding of these critical topics, emphasizing the importance of ethical behavior for IT professionals to benefit their workplaces and society at large.

Running head: IT PROFESSIONAL AND SOCIETY
IT Professional and Society
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author’s Note:

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IT PROFESSIONAL AND SOCIETY
“IT Professional and Society”
Ethics are set of regulations and rules, which are identified for a specific group of individuals.
From the lectures and the presentations I have attended, I have learnt that ethics are the most important
feature that are eventually responsible for the goals, objectives, actions and policies of that organization
(Andriof et al. 2017). I have known that the following the rules of ethics is mandatory for professions and
specially IT professionals. Ethics help the information technology professionals to complete their tasks by
being morally and ethically correct.
The following essay is a reflective essay on what I have learnt from the classes, reports and
lectures about ethics and ethical culture for IT professional and society. This essay will focus on the
topics that I have learnt from class, which includes the ethical dilemma and privacy, artificial intelligence
and ethics, the social and ethical aspects of widespread automation, future technology, IT product
copyright, ethical standards and conduct, technology impacts on society, the ethics committee, ethical
cultural issue and stakeholders.
I have learnt from the presentations, classes and lectures that a stakeholder can be anyone related
to a particular organization. Precisely, I can say that stakeholders are those individuals or groups of
people, who are directly or indirectly affected by an organization or can directly or indirectly affect the
organization. These people are responsible for the overall growth of the organization. Every decision
taken by the stakeholders of an organization are for the betterment of that organization (Missonier and
Loufrani-Fedida 2014). I have also known that a stakeholder can be either internal or external, which
means the stakeholders can belong either to the internal authority of the organization or to the external
authority of the organization. Moreover, a stakeholder can be either junior or senior level. A stakeholder
can be the unions, suppliers, customers, clerks of an organization. Similarly, the top management level,
that means the directors, chief executive officers and many more can also be claimed as the stakeholders
of that organization. I understood that these stakeholders are the important part of an organization.
I have understood that ethical dilemma and privacy are the most important features for an
information technology professional. Ethical dilemmas create a major problem in the work places of all
individuals. I have understood that it is the social responsibility of all professionals to overcome ethical
dilemma and privacy issues (Braswell, McCarthy and McCarthy 2017). This can be only done with the
help of IT profession’s Codes of Ethics and Codes of Conduct. These codes of ethics and codes of
conduct are responsible for the development of personal ethical framework and also to understand the
moral and legal responsibilities of these IT professionals towards their profession and society.

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IT PROFESSIONAL AND SOCIETY
My lecturer helped me to understand the basic concept of ethics of artificial intelligence. It is a
broad portion of the ethics of technology that are mainly related to robot and all other artificial intelligent
things. I have learnt that ethics of artificial intelligence is subdivided into roboethics (Russell 2015).
Roboethics is nothing but the concern of the human behavior regarding the designing, constructing,
utilization and treatment of the machine ethics and artificial intelligent beings. I have understood that
roboethics deals with the moral and the ethical behavior of AMAs or the artificial moral agents.
The other things that I have learnt from my lectures and presentations are the ethical and social
effect of automation on the society. The technological developments like the machine learning, artificial
intelligence and big data have created a major effect on the entire society. There is a potential scale of
disruption created by these above mentioned technological developments (Berberian et al. 2012). These
technologies often force an individual or an IT professional to be ethically and morally incorrect and this
creates problem for that professional. My lecturer helped me to understand this concept by providing me
relevant examples.
My lecturer was extremely helpful in helping me about the ethical implications on future
technology. Previously, I had vague ideas about this particular topic. However, after attending the classes
and lectures, my concept and idea were absolutely clear. Ethics play a significant role on future
technologies. The technologies that are emerging in the modern technological world should be ethically
correct or should have ethical implications (Stahl, Eden and Jirotka 2013). There are certain ethical and
regulatory challenges that are faced by the future technology. My lecturer helped me to understand the
various implications of ethics on future technology. If these technologies will not be ethical correct, it
will be extremely harmful for the society.
Copyright rights have created a major problem in the modern society. Copyright is the policy or
the legal right, which allows an individual to use other’s property. When the owner does not know about
this and the person is utilizing the property without the permission of the owner, it is known as the
violation of copyright (Dewey 2016). In IT world, it is extremely common that the products are violating
copyright policy. My lecturer gave examples for understanding this concept. Suppose, an company has
made a product, but it is stolen by the second company and that company is claiming that they have made
the product. This is absolutely unethical and illegal and can lead that person in jail.
The next thing that I have learnt from the lectures is the ethical standards and conducts. The
ethical standards are as follows:

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i) Integrity: This is the most important standard according to ethical standards and conduct. There
are high standards of personal and professional integrity (Herlihy and Corey 2014). This is mandatory for
an IT professional for maintaining integrity in his workplace.
ii) Accountability: The second ethical standard is the accountability. All the IT professionals
should take individual responsibility for all actions and outcomes. It has no tolerance for ethical
violations.
iii) Teamwork: The third ethical standard for an IT professional is to maintain a service
environment that encourages innovation, creativity and positive results through teamwork (Dewey 2016).
My lecturer helped me to understand the need and importance of teamwork in ethical work place.
iv) Excellence: The final ethical standard for an IT professional is to be dedicated to fair
treatment, mutual respect, diversity and trust.
The last things that I have learnt from the lectures and presentations are the ethical cultural issue
and ethical committee. I have understood that ethical cultural issue occurs because of the behavior of
human beings. This behavior is exhibited in two distinct approaches (Sharkey and Sharkey 2012). They
are by noticing the actions and activities like the corporate and the public statements about the ethical
behavior and the collection of the ethical attributes and values. These are extremely important for any IT
professional to understand the overall scenario of ethics in his work place.
Therefore, from the above reflective essay, I can conclude that the ethical standards are the most
important part of a company. They are responsible for the betterment or the loss of the organization. The
stakeholders are affected with the overall growth of the organization. Stakeholders are those individuals
or groups of people, who are directly or indirectly affected by an organization or can directly or indirectly
affect the organization. In the above essay, I have described about the different topics related to ethics like
the ethical dilemma, ethical standards and conduct, copyright issues, implications of ethics on future
technologies and many more. I have understood that all the ethical issues are can affect to an IT
professional in his workplace and he should be ethical correct for the betterment of his workplace and
society. I am thankful to my lecturer and peers, as they have helped me a lot in my understanding of the
topic.

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IT PROFESSIONAL AND SOCIETY
References
Andriof, J., Waddock, S., Husted, B. and Rahman, S.S., 2017. Unfolding stakeholder thinking: theory,
responsibility and engagement. Routledge.
Berberian, B., Sarrazin, J.C., Le Blaye, P. and Haggard, P., 2012. Automation technology and sense of
control: a window on human agency. PLoS One, 7(3), p.e34075.
Braswell, M.C., McCarthy, B.R. and McCarthy, B.J., 2017. Justice, crime, and ethics. Taylor & Francis.
Dewey, J., 2016. Ethics. Read Books Ltd.
Herlihy, B. and Corey, G., 2014. ACA ethical standards casebook. John Wiley & Sons.
Missonier, S. and Loufrani-Fedida, S., 2014. Stakeholder analysis and engagement in projects: From
stakeholder relational perspective to stakeholder relational ontology. International Journal of Project
Management, 32(7), pp.1108-1122.
Russell, S., 2015. Ethics of artificial intelligence. Nature, 521(7553), pp.415-416.
Sharkey, A. and Sharkey, N., 2012. Granny and the robots: ethical issues in robot care for the
elderly. Ethics and Information Technology, 14(1), pp.27-40.
Stahl, B.C., Eden, G. and Jirotka, M., 2013. Responsible research and innovation in information and
communication technology: Identifying and engaging with the ethical implications of ICTs. Responsible
innovation, pp.199-218.