PM – Blog 2

Ethics in systems design

Every day individuals are faced with decisions, some of them are easy such as medium or dark roast for your morning coffee, and some of them are harder such as should I purchase the condo or the house. Even still some decisions are even harder as they brush on topics that make you assess your feelings and personal beliefs in order to make these decisions, these decisions are called ethical decisions or ethical dilemmas; an example of an everyday-ish ethical dilemma is abortion. Should one be put in the situation where they are faced to make this decision they would be making their decision based on their belief system, their personal values, and their current state of mind.
The same belief systems would apply to individuals involved in the world of commerce. In business decision makers are constantly faced with ethical dilemmas. In regards to ethics in systems design, designers must ensure that they have given thought to ethics in the design of their systems. Issues that could arise when dealing with ethics in system design are privacy and relevancy.
In my opinion privacy is an area that is very large and complex when designing a system. For instance you need to design a system where peoples information is kept private but at the same time this information is needed to run the business. How many people can have access to individuals private information? What sort of security measures need to be put in place in order to ensure that individuals who are not authorized to view private information do not see this information. However the business process needs to run smoothly as well, how do you ensure that staff can effectively conduct their jobs while ensuring that these needs are met?
Relevancy is also an important topic when it comes to ethics in system design. System users and designers may need data that is relevant to the company however customers may deem this information inappropriate. For example, recently I had the pleasure of going to spa, at the spa they asked me to fill out about two pages of information about myself. Questions on the questionnaire included regular questions such as name, contact number, and address. However this questionnaire also included many questions that made me wonder if they absolutely needed to know the answers to, and also even if they needed these questions to be able to effectively perform their business, how was this information going to be viewed, who would view it (privacy issue), and if my responses to the questions would put me at an advantage or disadvantage over other customers. Some of the questions included, if I was menstruating, ethnic background, and if I was a vegetarian. Were these questions necessary? Lady helping me explained that there certain procedures that they perform cannot be performed when menstruating, by know the customers ethic background helps determine what products to use on their skin, and that if I was a vegetarian was important so that they would know whether or not it would be ok to serve prosciutto and melon during the waiting period in-between procedures. Of course these questions did not have to be answered, however especially regarding the ethnic background I felt very uncomfortable with having that sort of question on the questionnaire. Since I have taken a database class, I knew that this information would put onto their computer system. When these responses are on the database many people would be able to view my data and use the data. However was all that data absolutely necessary for the spa to perform their business?
When it comes to ethics in system design, the line between ethical and unethical can at times be very thin. I personally feel that it is in businesses best interest to raise discussion on these topics before they implement their systems, as it is easier to change what has not be done, than to have to deal with the results of crossing these boundaries.