Personal code of ethics for the IT Professional - Research Paper Example

This code of ethics should guide one as a professional in the field to do the right thing and deliver quality services. Ethics is a term used to refer to a standard of telling apart right from wrong and applying the result, or the distinction consciously and unconsciously. In information technology, the issue of privacy is crucial to the provision of service, where one needs to ensure utmost discretion (Mingers and Walsham, 2010). This is concerning the relationship between the professional and the client, where the privacy of the client should be preserved at great lengths as is the case done with transactions in banks.

In banks, information technology experts ensure privacy by encrypting the data transacted by the banks’ clients to servers and do not leak the information they may have access to. As a result, clients can rest assured that there is no cause for concern in their details on personal information getting out to the world. This is in addition to having their information used for personal gain by the professionals as they have access to all the information that the bank has. As a result, of this, it is important to inculcate privacy concerns in ethics, where as a professional one should not poke their noses where they do not belong.

Another moral to consider and include in the code of ethics is involvement in cybercrime, which works hand in hand with the privacy concerns. This is such that cybercrime works towards violating privacy rights of clients, where one can easily use the information to which they have access for fraudulent means such as hacking of accounts. With the penetration rates of information technology, protecting the needs of clients and clients themselves from cybercrime is an important thing that a professional should do.

As such, a professional should not use his or her skills for personal gain through fraudulent means, which cybercrime entails. This is as seen in cases of stealing intellectual property using one’s knowledge and skills in the field; thus, leading to loss of revenue to the actual owners. With this in mind, cybercrime involves hacking and plagiarizing intellectual property, which an information technologist should stay away from. In addition, following the use of information technology to bring down other people’s abilities and services should not be done, as it is also malicious use of skills and knowledge.

For this reason, it is only ethical to combat cybercrime with relevant authorities and refraining from engaging from such activities. Cybercrime also covers spread of illegal and inappropriate content over networks and through digital media, which IT professionals are prone and vulnerable to doing. Taking responsibility in these issues should be a high order priority to prevent such occurrences, especially in unintentional spreads of infections through network infrastructure (Taddeo and Vaccaro, 2011).

With this in mind, responsibility for one’s actions duties should be practiced as it ensures reliability and accountability on the side of clients towards professionals. Therefore, being responsible should, be included amongst one of the contents in the code of ethics. Accountability as part of ethics also ensures that quality work is done for clients and that the professional is satisfied with what he or she has done; thus deserves the pay received. It is because of this that development in the field is achieved and quality is assured provided accountability is