Today, accountability and ethical integrity is very critical for the success of a business, considering the extensive reliance on IT today by individuals, corporations and governments (Al-A'ali, 2008). This lesson has highlighted that, maintaining high standards of integrity and accountability by IT professionals is critical because it helps boost an individual or a company’s corporate image, which contribute to success. Additionally, the lesson also proved educative because it delved into the aspect of culture with regards to computer ethics, which is very critical considering that we live in a global community.
In particular, the week’s lesson explored computer ethics from the perspectives of the Islamic community. Accordingly, we get to learn that, it is not only the Christian community that value ethical values among IT professionals, but also the Islamic community. Additionally, software piracy, intellectual property theft, and software development issues are serious ethics issues that IT professionals are confronted with in their daily activities. Presently, there are many cases that involve IT professionals getting involved in software theft, IP theft and software development problems (Al-A'ali, 2008).
Some IT professionals engage in such unethical behaviors without understanding the moral issues associated with such acts. As such, I found this lesson very educating and informative on these issues as the lecture was able to demonstrate how ethical principles, such as deontological, virtue ethics and consequential ethics can be applied to help minimize IT professionals involving in such unethical practices. Therefore, I intend to utilize the lessons learned about computer ethics to promote ethical behaviors in professional life.
Week Five Code of Conduct has become an important tool that companies use to instill ethical behaviors in employees (Reynolds, 2014). According to the lesson, a code of conduct is a blue print guideline that defines how employees are expected to behave in the company. As such, the lesson has been educative to me because it has highlighted the importance of having a good ethical code and the needs to ensure that it is implemented. In fact, it is in this lesson that I came to understand why most companies are presently developing a code of conduct.
In particular, I learned that most companies develop an ethical code to ensure that employees demonstrate acceptable behaviors when dealing while in the company. In fact, this reminded me of the recent case at Volkswagen. Volkswagen is currently embroiled in a scandal involving cheating on nitrogen emission after it emerged that the engineers of the company installed the so-called “defeat software” that ensured that the cars do not provide the correct emissions that come from the cars when being tested.
Although Volkswagen has an ethical code that requires that all employees act fairly and honestly, this did not prevent the company from engaging in unethical behaviors. Therefore, from this lesson and the case at Volkswagen, I have come to understand that the codes of conducts that companies develop can only work if the leaders themselves behave ethically and implement it. Otherwise, a code of conduct becomes just a statement or a blueprint (Reynolds, 2014). As such, based on what I have learned in this lesson, I intend to ensure that I assist in the development of an effective ethical code in an organization that I would work for to ensure that the organization behave ethically to ensure that the interest of shareholders and all the other stakeholders are protected.
Week Six Lesson six is certainly one of the lessons that have had a huge impact on my life. Being a strong advocate of environmental conservation, I found the lesson very informative particularly in the present day society, where climate change has become an issue of concern. The entire planet is currently experiencing global warming effect that has contributed to climate change. Some of the devastating effects of climate change include prolonged drought, increased flooding, rising sea levels, increased glacial movements and typhoons, just to name but a few (Maeda, 2014).
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