Ethics is set of principles that determine the behavior of an individual or group in terms of moral duties. Ethics is also defined as set of moral codes. Ethics helps to determine and differentiate what is right and what is wrong. Professional ethics is a set of principles, linked morally to a specific profession. Natural Moral Sense is the basis of professional ethics. Every human being is granted moral sense that helps him to determine ethics link to his profession. The ethics about IT professionals include property rights in the form of electronic content, protection of customer information and how information technology affects our privacy concerns and society as whole.
Good professional simply means good professional ethics, as good professional always put high priority to their professional ethics rather than their personal relation or any personal gain. Professional must follow ethics pertaining to their profession, it makes them more compatible in dealing with others and they should not compromise on basic ethics attached to their profession. For understanding; now a days it is very easy for anyone to duplicate copyrighted content from one computer to portable device or another computer, but IT ethics suggest that this act is wrong as no author’s approval is taken. Another example is that it may be easy to access any personal information by a computer, but computer ethics guides us that this practice is unethical. Professionals must follow complete table of ethics as per their profession as it helps them to grow in their profession without been guilty of any unethical practice. Good professional have a record of professional ethics that helps them to gain the trust from their customers, co-workers and management; this helps them to get more business and better opportunities.
In professional working environment, many disputes involve around facts and values. Facts and values often seem to be confused; a conflict of values can come through a conflict of facts, or vice versa. As the nature of differences, values issues and factual issues will make different kinds of issues to the conflict. Concerning parties must sort out these issues by handling each issue type appropriately, so they can address a conflict in the constructive manner. IT professional ethics is divided into several categories including viruses, hacking, piracy, spamming, cyber porn, disturbing someone privacy and responsibility to use software with fair means. Information technology through internet have given us many benefits and change our lives in terms of business development and communications, but some of IT professional are willing to take benefits by unethical ways. There are several unethical web operations that includes identity theft and targeted predatory behavior at specific location of internet. Internet business has also their part to play for ethics, client commonly provides their personal and financial detail to websites. The main purpose of using client base data that businesses want to aggressively introduces their products to mass market that often is the step for them to cross the line.
Conclusion
We are living in the era of informational and technological revolution where a faster growing rate of web users demands IT professionals to put more focus on IT ethics, a large population of our world can be effected by malicious act. It’s the duty of IT professional to gain client trust and not to use their data for any personal or organization gain.
Works Cited
Bynum, Ward and Simon Rogerson. Computer Ethics and Professional Responsibility. 2004: Wiley, n.d.
