Regardless of how familiar you are with the different categories of discrimination, you can use the set of guidelines for each type of discrimination published by the EEOC to ensure that you operate properly with respect to this ethical issue in business. Note: The lending industry is not immune to ethical dilemmas in business, but it is taking steps towards leveling the lending playing field for women, minorities, young businesses, young owners, and more.
As is the case for all ethical issues in business, the first step to preventing unacceptable behavior is to educate employees, make sure everyone is aware of the rules, and have a system for distributing disciplinary action when needed. After that, one of the best ways to fight discrimination at work and guarantee a diverse group of employees is to consciously hire people with different characteristics and backgrounds.
Having a diverse workforce will not only ensure equal representation for different groups of people but will also, in turn, help your business fight against discrimination by bringing in a variety of perspectives into the fold.
You should also be careful about implementing business policies that may be inadvertently discriminatory towards a particular group of people.
When it comes to employee etiquette on social media , the bottom line for most businesses is that the employee can be justifiably fired if the activity is deemed disloyal or financially harmful to the company. Addressing ethical problems in business connected to social media can be tricky mainly because most situations will fall in the gray area.
In alone, the U. It may come as little surprise to learn that the two industries with the most fatal injuries are transportation 1, fatalities and construction 1, fatalities. The World Health Organization has gathered data to develop some fundamental advice on how to promote safety and health in the workplace:. Even if your business operates entirely within the confines of an office building, environmental responsibility is still on the list of ethical issues in business that you should pay mind to.
Every business owner is responsible for the carbon footprint that their company produces. Fortunately, the government has made laws to address most of the environmentally-related ethical dilemmas in business. All of that said, a recent study found that a whopping It should be noted though that small businesses have reasons for not implementing environmental management systems. Those reasons include the financial burden of making changes, complications that may arise while implementing changes, not having enough guidance on how to go green with the business , and so on.
How can your business avoid those obstacles? There are numerous ways that your business can address environmental responsibility, some of which can be a bit costly and others that you can start implementing today.
Among the easier-to-do tactics your business should be doing: going paperless. Not only will it save trees, but it will also save you money — roughly 31 times the price you spend on the paper itself. The planet will thank you, and so will your bank account. Of the [perhaps] more complicated and costly routes to environmental consciousness: using renewable energy. Namely solar power.
How does reducing electricity consumption impact the environment? Consider this example from Fast Company :. At the end of the day, we all should be doing our best to keep our planet clean and healthy for future generations — your business can play its part!
Say, for example, your business was to misrepresent its earnings and expenses. If you then get caught, you could also be responsible for your employees losing their livelihoods — even if they have no knowledge of the wrongdoing. This is definitely an ethical problem in business that you want to avoid at all costs. Important note: After some careful thought, you may find that hiring an accountant is well-worth the investment, but you may still be short on funds to make it happen.
Consider taking business loans as a way to clear this hurdle and do what you need to do to keep your business protected from the risks of fraudulent accounting practices. Technology has enabled vastly more complicated and interconnected processes, such that a problem far upstream in a process has a ripple effect on the rest of the process.
Sarbanes Oxley requires the certification of all internal controls in large part for this reason. Unfortunately, accuracy is one of those areas that always seems to be assigned to the dreaded "someone," which all too often translates to no one. On what basis should the level of accuracy in any given system be determined? How much accuracy is sufficient? How should responsibility for accuracy be assigned?
Most assembly lines have a cord or chain that can be pulled when a worker notices a particular unit has a flaw. The line is brought to a halt and the unit can either be removed or repaired.
The effect of the error can be contained. As complex interactions between systems and ever larger databases have been created, the downstream consequence of error has become vastly more magnified.
So too has the growing dependence on highly distributed systems increased the potential for, and the cost of, error. Do managers have a correspondingly greater responsibility to assess negative outcomes and the mitigations of costs and effects of errors?
Can management or system owners be held accountable if unforeseen errors occur? Is this also the case for predictable but unmitigated error? As we mentioned in the previous article on ethics, security used to be confined to locking the door on the way out of the office or making sure the lock on the safe was spun to fully engage the tumblers. Technology presents us with a whole new set of security challenges.
Networks can be breached, personal identification information can be compromised, identities can be stolen and potentially result in personal financial ruin, critical confidential corporate information or classified government secrets can be stolen from online systems, Web sites can be hacked, keystroke loggers can be surreptitiously installed, and a host of others.
How far can--and should--management go in determining the security risks inherent in systems? What level of addressing those risks can be considered reasonable? Can system owners be held personally liable when security is compromised? When an organization holds stewardship of data on external entities--customers, individuals, other organizations--and that data is compromised, to what extent is the victimized corporation liable to the secondary victims, those whose data was stolen?
Organizations generally have internal policies for dealing with security breaches, but not many yet have specific policies to address this area. Managers who do not secure the systems for which they're responsible, employees who cavalierly use information to which they should not have access, and system users who find shortcuts around established security procedures are dealt with in the same fashion as anyone who doesn't meet the fundamental job requirements, anything from transfer or demotion to termination.
Should compromised or ineffective security be held to a higher standard? He has also been an adjunct professor in the master's program at Manhattanville College. By Jeff Relkin In "10 ethical issues raised by IT capabilities," we examined ethical issues raised by IT capabilities, issues that all of us as technology professionals need to consider as we go about our duties.
Editor's Picks. The best programming languages to learn in Check for Log4j vulnerabilities with this simple-to-use script. TasksBoard is the kanban interface for Google Tasks you've been waiting for. Paging Zefram Cochrane: Humans have figured out how to make a warp bubble. Show Comments. Using copyright to protect your source code is beneficial for the company because it provides a convenient way of securing intellectual property rights. If a client requires a software engineer to convey source code, the parties should clarify whether the client needs to claim the source code or simply modify or update the product later.
If the parties agree to a product permits agreement where the source code is required to be revealed to redo or refresh the product, the engineer may incorporate an arrangement under which the client is committed to keeping the source code confidential. From hackers and cybercriminals to companies overlooking errors, these all fall under concerns about the state of ethics in the software engineering world.
These issues may seem distant and unrealistic until you actually face them. Add to it that life is not always black and white, and you have yourself a nice brain-twisting puzzle. Even though facing these ethical dilemmas as software developers seems tricky, there are solutions and steps we can take to do better. The most important step to take is to educate yourself and other software engineers about the ethics of your work.
Development bootcamps often skip this part in favor of practical knowledge that can be used directly at work. Technology is not neutral. Educating people about ethical issues and the consequences of their actions has become crucial at this point.
Educating software engineers about the universal standards of business and software development ethics can improve their understanding of their responsibility to society and how to act on it.
It can also help you decide which companies to work for or how to behave ethically in your own business. There is a really useful set of rules called the Software Engineering Code of Ethics that indicates the moral and professional commitments of software engineers.
This code was created by a global team made up of mechanical, government, military, and instructive experts. Client and employer: Software engineers shall act in a manner that is in the best interests of their client and employer consistent with the public interest. Product: Software engineers shall ensure that their products and related modifications meet the highest professional standards possible.
Judgment: Software engineers shall maintain integrity and independence in their professional judgment.
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