An ethical decision-making process for computing professionals

Abstract

Our comments focus on the ACM Code of Ethics and situate the Code within a general ethical decision-making process to specify the five steps which logically precede human action in ethical matters and determine that action, and the individual difference traits in these five steps which bear upon the resolution of an ethical problem and lead to morally responsible action. Our main purpose is to present a cognitive moral processing model which computing professionals can use to better understand their professional rights and duties. It is clear that the Code provides substantial guidance in the areas of intellectual property rights, unauthorized entry into computing systems, and privacy. In other areas, such as obscenity on bulletin-board systems, the Code is silent. An interactive software program which allows the user to see the ways in which the Code is integrated and instructive in the six-step moral decision-making process is accessible via the internet. Our secondary purpose is to reformulate the Code as a set of questions which allow the computing professional to see practices which diminish the human person as unethical and those which enhance the human person as ethical.