Professional Ethics: Case Study Analysis in Professional Environments

This case study delves into an ethical dilemma faced by Christina, a software manager, who discovers minor bugs in accounting software but is instructed to release it without fixing them. The analysis employs Chris Macdonald's methodology to navigate the conflict between personal prejudices and professional ethics, emphasizing the importance of identifying moral decisions, stakeholders, shared values, and balancing benefits with potential harm. It references the ACS Code of Ethics, particularly concerning public interest and honesty, suggesting Christina consider legal action against the organization for violating ethical standards. The study highlights the responsibility of professionals to uphold ethical conduct and protect the public interest, aligning with the ACS code's principles. Desklib provides access to similar case studies and solved assignments for students.

Running Head: CASE STUDY
CASE STUDY ON PROFESSIONAL ETHICS
Students ID:
Name of the University
Authors note:

2
CASE STUDY
Discussion
Christina is suffering from an ethical dilemma related to professional ethics and
personal prejudices. She is basically experiencing from a conflict of interest arising from her
own personal prejudices from ethical viewpoint resulting in violation of professional ethics.
Being a software manager, Christina’s duty is to program and test the release of the
accounting software.
Therefore, Christina has been recently testing three more software’s that have been
written by her colleagues, in which she has observed some minor bugs that would require
fixing. However, the manager has decided to release this software without fixing it
completely to the public. Christina, in this case, is aware of the violation of ethics that the
company is attempting to do.
Considering, Chris Macdonald methodology of ethical dilemma, Christina can follow
these steps to resolve the problem. Firstly, Christina needs to successfully identify the
decision that is of moral importance, specifically decisive clues that signify the conflict in
between two or more different values.
Secondly, she needs to identify the individual that has the stake in the decision. In this
context, she has to be imaginative as well as sympathetic (Roberts 2015). This is because it is
often important to consider the organisational parties whose interest must be given more
priority than the ethical morality. Apart from these, she needs to analyse the relations
between professional parties and herself with relevant institutions.
Thirdly, she needs to take a note of the shared values that may bring in the question of
trust, the issue of justice or harm that may be caused to the public due to the software.
Fourthly, Christina needs to create a balance in between benefits and the burdens associated

3
CASE STUDY
with the production of the software, the preferences made by the public that took place
(Bynum 2017). Lastly, she needs to question the values in relevant to their personal opinion
of the customers based on the ethical value.
ACS Code of ethics and relevant clauses
2.2 public interest
Christina has to recognise those who are potentially influenced by the unethical work
of the organisation by considering their interest. Secondly, she needs to respect the
intellectual property of others
4.7 Honesty
As stated by Burke et al. (2016), the organisations must not misrepresent an
individual client or employee’s potential ability such as to exploit the appropriateness of the
product and services. Secondly, the organisation needs to respect and safeguard the
stakeholder’s personal interest.
Thirdly, they are required to respect, and seek professional expertise of their
colleagues and needs to give a realistic estimation of the project. Fourthly, they need to work
as per the satisfaction and interest of the public and offer them proper service.
Christina, therefore, may take legal help against the organisational professionals for
violating the ACS code of informational technology conduct. According to ACS code of
professional conduct she can take refrain herself from the professional role that is hampering
the image of the professional and is exploiting the name of ACS. In this regards, she is
required to take suitable steps against the organisational members who are involved with the
violation of this ACS code of professional conduct. In this case, according to professional

4
CASE STUDY
ACS code of ethics, she can take suitable action against the unethical behaviour of the
organisation (Ferguson et al. 2016).

5
CASE STUDY
Reference list
Burke, A., Lee-Koo, K. and McDonald, M., 2016. An ethics of global security. Journal of
global security studies, 1(1), pp.64-79.
Bynum, T.W., 2017. Ethical challenges to citizens of ‘The automatic Age’: Norbert Wiener
on the information society. In Computer Ethics (pp. 3-12). Routledge.
Ferguson, S., Thornley, C. and Gibb, F., 2016. Beyond codes of ethics: how library and
information professionals navigate ethical dilemmas in a complex and dynamic information
environment. International Journal of Information Management, 36(4), pp.543-556.
Roberts, L.D., 2015. Ethical issues in conducting qualitative research in online
communities. Qualitative Research in Psychology, 12(3), pp.314-325.