Alexander Conrad
Professor Nicol
Fall Phil 355E
29 October 2023
4.4 Case Analysis on Professional Ethics
In the article “The Code I’m Still Ashamed Of” by Bill Sourour, he explains the time he made a quiz for a pharmaceutical company to advertise their product. The reason that it was unethical and why he was ashamed was because the main point was to sell the drug the client had and it ended up having a teenage girl commit suicide because of the side effects that were not present on the quiz. Sourour is ashamed of making it, now knowing full well that it was unethical to make that code, where no matter how you answered the quiz, the “solution” was the drug being advertised. In this Case Analysis I will argue that deontology shows us that the code was morally problematic because of influencing the teenage audience into taking the drug to solve their problems, and that Sourour should have done anything differently because it would have been more ethical to not code that quiz.
A central concept from the Codes of Ethics that we went over in class was the concept of following a specific professional code of ethics. To elaborate, each source had its own set of ethical rules based on the occupation, such as ACM with making sure that every ACM member follow moral imperatives. This would be like contributing to society and human well-being or being honest and trustworthy. Same with IEEE and the NSPE (National Society of Professional Engineers), the first part of their Codes of Ethics is to commit and follow these rules to be the highest ethical and professional they can be. However, part of their code isn’t just about the welfare of the public, but also faithfully following what their clients want and so they act upon it to uphold the trustworthiness and credibility of the company. Going based off of this concept, what Sourour did was ethical with the business or company, but unethical to the people because the product was the misleading factor. In general, it was still wrong to write the code for the quiz, it would have gone against the client, however, would have protected the audience that this product was going to be sold and mislead to.
Another concept would have been an issue were Sourour to not uphold the confidentiality of the product to the people to inform them. In almost all three of different Codes of Ethics we learn, in the professionalism part is upholding privacy laws, copyrights, and confidential information. A Code that directly goes against that however, is in the ethical portion, protecting the people, being honest and trustworthy, and trying to promote the safety and health of the public or trying to avoid injuring people either them physically or in other ways. Going based off of that specific part of the code, ethically speaking Sourour should not have written that code even if at the time he did not know what would have happened. The quiz and product along with it being promoted, actively was part of the reason someone had harmed themselves, not knowing the side effects or being targeted specifically towards one group of people can do more harm than good. Based on Deontology, which is focusing on people’s reasons for acting in considering if that action is right or wrong. So, even if something good is done, doing it for the wrong reasons can still make it bad. Sourour did something ethically bad, however he did it for the right reason. He was following his job, yet the client that hired him had an ethically bad job, which is why it was so morally bad. I don’t think going based off the concepts of Code of Ethics that Sourour could have done anything differently. He didn’t have a choice and also did not know it was bad until after it was already published. So, you could say he should have not done the code for the quiz because the code always led to the quiz telling the taker to take their product, which had unknown side effects, but looking at how it happened, it would be hard at the time to do something differently.
Mary Beth Armstrong’s chapter on “Confidentiality: A Comparison across the Professions of Medicine, Engineering and Accounting”, talks about how important it is to have confidentiality for those specific professions. As discussed before, companies have policies that have employees keep a certain level of confidentiality with their work, which can be different based on levels and promotions as well as clearance that the general public should or can’t know about. Armstrong makes various points across each profession that discusses the necessity. For Medicine, as well as each job, they need to keep patient records or affairs secret or just between the patient and doctor. The reason for this is privacy and personal information that should not be spread, without this policy, people wouldn’t trust their doctors with information that they wouldn’t normally share or illnesses that have to be treated. This also applies to Engineering, the code an engineer is told to make has to consider “The protection of a client’s or employer’s interests his first professional obligation” (Armstrong 80). Which this essentially means in a professional standpoint, what the client says they want, the engineer has to do it to maintain their professionalism even if the interests are again typical Code of Ethics policy. This also applies to accounting, as the professionalism of this profession is to essentially do their job and defend their client even if they are guilty. It might go against their personal beliefs or all evidence points towards them doing it, they still have to fight to see their client free as its part of the job and they have to worry about professionalism over the other code of ethics.
To tie confidentiality back into all three of these professions, they have to have confidential information in order to do their jobs successfully and professionally, otherwise people wouldn’t trust them and they wouldn’t get paid. This can lead to people becoming whistleblowers, which essentially means that they share confidential information past the head and everyone else in the company for the general public to see, which often times leads to confusion because its not an outside attack, but came from the inside. According to Armstrong, the only reasons that professions like engineers should provide that information to go public would be if it does serious and considerable harm, documented strong evidence, and making their concerns known to their superiors. To analyze the case with those concepts, it would have been difficult for Sourour to go public about the information to ethically correct the code, he would have to had evidence as well as prove it was dangerous before going public with it. Using deontology, he would ethically be in the right were he to do that because he is doing it for a good reason and outcome. At the time if he were able to get that information before resigning and bringing it up, he could have ethical reasoning for releasing that information to the public to protect them, especially the audience targeted by the product.
So, to conclude what was morally wrong about writing the code was how that code was used for the product. The product was advertising to teenage girls, which if doing the quiz, no matter the outcome would be the product being what they need. As explained before it would have been hard for Sourour to do anything to change the code or let the public know about it without breaking the code of ethics for his company, mainly the professionalism aspect of it. This argument isn’t fully on one side or the other due to understanding the reasoning of why Sourour couldn’t have done anything differently, but under other circumstances could because of how unethical it was to make the code. This being letting the public know, since it was harmful towards its target audience and unethical to have, so would be understandable especially under the deontology ethics that it would be the right thing to do.