Some questions around Ethical

By Raul Bernardino

“How far should you be willing to push the ethical case that you should not be aiding and abetting tax fraud?”

As a professional from the field of the computing, we must have a moral responsibility and to promote a good conduct, in which we are going to contribute to the best of the society, whereas we are living in. “the concept of the good conduct is that being a good citizen of being a positive force in the world,” (Adam & McCrindle, 2008).

At any moment of time or in any opportunities that we have, we should be willing to promote or showing the ability of the ethical issue, that we are also firmly not to help any customers who is willing to implementing fraud taxation or a false of the accounting procedure programming. In other words, as we are computing professionals, we have to contribute in order to be a healthy society. For instances, we have to remind our customers that, whatever they are trying do is illegal. Additionally, we are not going to fix or help to fix the issue. If they are still persuade you, you need to tell them that you are going to consult with your company management and your company lawyer. This is to ensure, that your action will be in line with company regulation and the country law.

It is a problem of doing a work as requested and gets pay after the works done. If you do so, you put yourself in the risk and this is an amateur job and not a professional. In any circumstances, we have to think the consequences of taking and doing the job. This is a professionalism, in which you are the one who responsible and accountable to your own actions.

“Would you personally and/or your company be criminally liable if you did? This answer may vary based on the laws in your country.”

In my own view points, I do say yes. I have to responsible for my own actions. I should have several references far before taking any acts. For example in my company, I am only person who knows how to fix the customer issue, then what I am going to do? I will be asking company that I work for, to have signed a paper that I am not going to responsible on the fixing the problem and the company will be the one to responsible on my behalf.  However, if in the company there are several employees who know how to fix? First of all, I will be not taking this job and offer to the others; however, I have a moral responsibility to explain to the team that there is a risk of doing illegal’s activities and leave up to the team to choose.  

You can do the sharing of your best knowledge to the team that there are possible of the negative of the consequences that would be coming from their actions. Therefore, you have to get experts or advisors to advice you and team whether your activities plans are correct or thus it imperfect.

To do a good planning, you have to accommodate all aspects that are involving the project. For example, the environmental issue, the health and safety issue, and etc. Whenever, we are talking about environment, you have to counts who is working in specific area with you, not only that, but it is also count third parties that involves, e.g. contractors, services provider, etc. including social impact.

Another aspect is maintaining the legitimate interest and relationship with other business, costumers, and other services provider or even suppliers. This is also including a building of the trust between company and individuals, and individuals within company.  

“What does due diligence require in this case?”

In my point of view, first of all, you should comply with internal policies and procedure. Secondly, you have to comply with external one, in which is the country law. “Every citizen with a certified income has the duty to pay tax in order to contribute to public revenues, in accordance with the law” (Timor-Leste Constitution section 55)

You had appropriate trainings of ethics and code of conduct. You have letter of the authorization from company that you work for, in which have mentioned that you are not going to responsible of the fixing issue. There are appropriate documentations of doing a job. You have discussed with expert advisors and management in the company or third parties.

“In general, what responsibilities do computing professionals have in situations like this?”

I do think that in general, as we are computing professionals and we have known the ethical and code of conduct issues. Therefore, we have to tell the truth to the customer that we are not going to fix their problem. We have to tell them, that they are trying to do illegal activities. If the customer still insists to do so, the customer may have choice to ask other company to fix for them.

“Is it enough to produce (as employees and as companies) what the client requests?”

My humble answer is no. Why is that? It is because we have to act as a professional. “The professionalism means maintaining the ethical approach to one’s job within the structure of an association,” (Adam & McCrindle, 2008).

First of all, we have to study and evaluate the request including doing a proper assessment to respond the request. We will be also documenting all the result of the finding and giving all alternative possible solutions including environment issues, health and safety issues, cost involvement, ethical issues, and code of conducts. This final document, could also be a lesson learned, to help the requestor to reflect themselves that whatever has being done so far is correct and in the right direction or in wrong direction. We will be giving the requestor is a choices, whether they are willing to change or choose different direction or not.   If the request chooses right direction then it is time for us to develop and produce their request.

However, in some situation the people just ignore the norms, code of conduct, ethical, environment, health and safety or not to comply in one of these components of the issue because they have no choice. What I do mean here is economically they do need some payment for survive. In their mind is money and money nothing else. With this sense they just executed or produced the request without any further analysis or assessment of the impacts or even the risks.       

References:

·         Adams, A.A. & McCrindle, R.J. (2008) Pandora’s box: Social and professional issues of the information age. West Sussex, England: John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Ch. 10,P. 323-340

·         Association for Computing Machinery, Code of Ethics [on-line]. Available from: http://www.acm.org/constitution/code.html (Last accessed date: July 25, 2007)

·         British computer Society, Codes of Conduct and Practice, on-line]. Available from: http://www.BCS.org/bcs/aboutBCS/codes/conduct/ (Last accessed date: July 25, 2007)

·         Timor-Leste Constitution [Online] Available from: 

http://www.gov.east-timor.org/constitution/constitution-Timor-Leste.pdf (Accessed date: January 25, 2011)

·         Timor-Leste ratifies first ILO Conventions [Online] Available from:   http://www.ilo.org/global/about-the-ilo/press-and-media-centre/news/WCMS_108307/lang--en/index.htm (Accessed date: January 25, 2011)