Professional Conduct in Programming: Three Case Studies

Case Study 1: Jean the Programmer

Jean, a statistical database programmer, is trying to write a large statistical program needed by her company. Programmers in this company are encouraged to write about their work and to publish their algorithms in professional journals. After months of tedious programming, Jean has found herself stuck on several parts of the program. Her manager, not recognising the complexity of the problem, wants the job completed within the next few days. Not knowing how to solve the problems, Jean remembers that a co-worker had given her source listings from his current work and from an early version of a commercial software package developed at another company. On studying these programs, she sees two areas of code which could be directly incorporated into her own program. She uses segments of code from both her coworker and the commercial software, but does not tell anyone or mention it in the documentation. She completes the project and turns it in a day ahead of time.

ACS Code of Professional Conduct values and relevant clauses of the Code of Professional Conduct

1.2.1 Public Interest a) identify those potentially impacted by your work and explicitly consider their interests; f) respect the intellectual property of others;  

1.2.4 Competence b) not misrepresent your skills or knowledge; d) respect and protect your stakeholders' proprietary interests; g) respect, and seek when necessary, the professional expertise of colleagues in their areas of competence

1 The cases in the following reference paper also appear in Burmeister (2000), which addresses the ACS Code of Ethics (now ACS Code of Professional Conduct). 

Australian Computer Society  |  ACS Code of Professional Conduct Case Studies | March 2014   Page 4 

Case No. 2: Diane the Consultant [1]

Summary of case

Three years ago Diane started her own consulting business. She has been so successful that she now has several people working for her and many clients. Their consulting work included advising on how to set up corporate intranets, designing database management systems, and advising about security.

Presently she is designing a database management system for the personnel office of a medium-sized company. Diane has involved the client in the design process, informing the CEO, the director of computing, and the director of personnel about the progress of the system. It is now time to make decisions about the kind and degree of security to build into the system. Diane has described several options to the client. Because the system is going to cost more than they planned, the client has decided to opt for a less secure system. She believes the information they will be storing is extremely sensitive. It will include performance evaluations, medical records for filing insurance claims, salaries, and so forth.

Case Study 2: Diane the Consultant

With weak security, employees working on client machines may be able to figure out ways to get access to this data, not to mention the possibility of on-line access from hackers. Diane feels strongly that the system should be much more secure. She has tried to explain the risks, but the CEO, director of computing and director of personnel all agree that less security will do. What should she do? Should she refuse to build the system as they request?

ACS Code of Professional Conduct values and relevant clauses of the Code of Professional Conduct

1.2.1 Public Interest b) raise with stakeholders any potential conflicts between your professional activity and legal or other accepted public requirements; e) endeavour to preserve the integrity, security, continuity and utility of ICT; g) endeavour to preserve the confidentiality and privacy of the information of others. 

1.2.2 Quality of Life c) understand, and give due regard to, the perceptions of those affected by your work; 

1.2.4 Competence a) endeavour to provide products and services which match the operational and financial needs of your stakeholders; e) advise your stakeholders when you believe a proposed project, product or service is not in their best interest   
  
Max works in a large state department of alcoholism and drug abuse. The agency administers programs for individuals with alcohol and drug problems, and maintains a huge database of information on the clients who use their services.  Some of the data files contain the names and current addresses of clients. 

Max has been asked to take a look at the track records of the treatment programs. He is to put together a report that contains the number of clients seen in each program each month for the past five years, length of each client’s treatment, number of clients who return after completion of a program, criminal histories of clients, and so on. In order to put together this report, Max has been given access to all files in the agency’s mainframe computer. After assembling the data into a file that includes the clients’ names, he downloads it to the computer in his office.

Under pressure to get the report finished by the deadline, Max decides he will have to work at home over the weekend in order to finish on time. He burns the information onto a CD and takes it home. After finishing the report he leaves the CD at home and forgets about it.
ACS Code of Professional Conduct values and relevant clauses of the Code of Professional Conduct 

1.2.1 Public Interest d) take into consideration the fact that your profession traverses many other professions, and has implications for other social systems and organisations; g) endeavour to preserve the confidentiality and privacy of the information of others. 

1.2.2 Quality of Life a) recognise, in your work, the role that ICT can play to enhance the quality of life of people, particularly the disadvantaged or those with disabilities; 

1.2.4 Competence d) respect and protect your stakeholders' proprietary interests

Case Study 1: Jean the Programmer

First Step - What’s going on?

The case study revolves around the QA group that is associated with the project. The group has decided to give the testing sign off for the project without carrying out any of the testing activities on the same. The reason for this is the utmost amount of trust that the group has on the customers and the development team. This activity may have some of the negative impacts on the final version of the system.

Second Step: What are the facts?

Testing is an activity that aims to validate and verify a system against its specifications and also highlights the deviations and defects that may be present. The decision of the QA group to provide the sign off without actually testing the system is sure to leave some defects as it is in the system. Also, there may be stability and performance issues that the customers may experience .

Third Step: What are the issues?

The type of testing that is carried out by the development team is primarily unit testing of the system. The customers carry out an acceptance testing on the system. However, the in-depth testing of the system is carried out by QA group that may include system testing, performance testing, usability testing, security testing, integration testing and many others . There are many issues that may not be detected by either the development team or the customers and can only be identified by the QA group. Such issues and defects will not be corrected and will remain in the system which may have varying degrees of impact .

Fourth Step: Who is affected?

• Customers will have an impact due to the decision by the QA group as they may encounter low to severe categories of bugs during the usage of the system.

• The development team will be affected as it will be held responsible and accountable for developing an erroneous system .

• QA group as a whole along with each individual in the group will be affected as they will be held responsible for giving a go ahead without conducting proper testing activities.

• The parent company will be affected as they the poor performance of the system will bring down their reputation among the customers.
Fifth Step: What are the ethical issues and the associated implications?

Character Ethics

It is an ethical theory that identifies an act as ethically justified or not on the basis of the morals that are associated with it .

•  The morals of the QA group present in this act are their lack of responsibility along with baseless trust on the rest of the parties for their duties.

•  The act is therefore termed as inaccurate and improper as per the theory of Character Ethics.