11. Discussion of ethical practice

When answering an examination question about ethics, you will need to be able to discuss a number of examples of ethical behaviour. The ACM 'general moral imperatives' is an useful list to learn as well as the headline BCS items.

But further to that, you also need to consider some of the issues that come up that make people less enthusiastic about ethical behaviour or following a code of conduct to the letter.

Some of these include

Competitive disadvantage if acting ethically.

A company may find that it is not winning contracts because competitors are willing to use unethical practices such as offering bribes and other blandishments to persuade buyers to go with their offering.

For example, a competitor offers virtually free luxury holidays to the key people involved. This may be thinly disguised in the form of an invitation to attend a 'conference' on an exotic island or to take an all-expenses paid 'fact finding mission' to a luxury location.

The great risk they are taking by behaving like this, is if they are found out they are likely to endure great damage to their reputation as an honourable business and lose future work.

Losing key staff and expertise to the competition

A company may deliberately target a competitor's key staff by offering them hard to resist employment deals, then tap them for their insider knowledge of competitor product plans.

One way companies resist this behaviour is to insist that key personnel sign a time-limited 'non-compete' agreement so they cannot jump to the competition so easily.

Honourable companies insist that their managers do not ask or invite new recruits to reveal confidential information about their former employers.