Within Bill Sourour’s article “The Code I’m Still Ashamed Of” lays a series of morally and ethically questionable choices made by Pharmaceutical, and ultimately enacted by front-end programmers. Sourour reflects upon his early experience as an up and coming software engineer, and how he was hired by an unnamed pharmaceutical manufacturer to build a website for patients prescribed an unspecified medication. One of the first tasks given to Sourour was to build a quiz for individuals on the site that
would go over their current treatments, symptoms, and other relevant questions in order to guide patients or as he would find out, keep the profits flowing to the manufacturer. While at first there was no thought given to what was being asked of him, his feelings behind his purpose were changed forever as a result of him finding out about a patient who killed themselves due to a drug-induced side-effect of the medication he was championing. Another ethical dilemma brought up from Sourour’s work is the fact that with exception of a few answers, each quiz result would result in directing the test taker to the manufacturer’s drug. Ultimately, the ethical choices made by the pharmaceutical company raise significant concerns, and for that reason I will be using the ethical tool of utilitarianism for this case study.

The ACM Code of Ethics highlights the many different responsibilities that professionals within the computing field must abide by when conducting themselves within society and business. This code also establishes the foundation of being a beacon of public good (as well as maintaining trust), avoiding causing harm, and performing evaluations of possible consequences as a result of their work. Amongst the many different themes throughout the Code of Ethics, one of the most important principles is to avoid causing harm. Harm in this sense is not inherently a physical harm, yet it implies that the decisions made by professionals in the field have a real chance at impacting the physical world as Sourour would also learn. This responsibility is relative to each and every code, system, or concept they are a part of; it also instills a real sense of action and consequence. Yet how exactly does one in the profession avoid harm? In the case of Bill Sourour, all he simply did was create a quiz that fulfilled what his customer wanted, right? Wrong. Had Bill applied the principle of avoiding harm, he may have realized that the quiz designed to attract or keep patients taking the medication creates a real situation where someone could be harmed, or
in this instance, killed. From the perspective of the ACM Code of Ethics, the ethical concern would not necessarily be that a death occurred, but rather, Bill Sourour should have been able to foresee the possible outcome of his design choice. From a utilitarian perspective, this principle ties perfectly into the core concept of minimizing unnecessary suffering. Software engineers should seek to better society, and
understand that each and every line of code has the ability to change the world; and on the other hand, it would also require that they take the customer’s requirements and ensure that they are aligned well within the ACM Code of Ethics.

Another core principle of the Code of Ethics is to contribute to society and well-being. This concept seeks to establish that individuals who are designing or creating technology should use their skills to find ways to improve society. It attempts to change the way technology is viewed; whereas it is typically seen as a commercial item, it argues that technology’s impact on society is vastly understated. It also states that
engineers of said software should ensure that their systems should avoid creating an adverse effect on individuals or communities as a whole. While the pharmaceutical company that employed Sourour was providing a service to increase the health and well-being of its patients, it does so in a manner that would go against this very principle of positively impacting the well-being of its patients; instead of providing
patients with real medical information (or information about side-effects), it sought to design a quiz that would just continue to lead its participants back to the manufactured drug. From a utilitarian perspective, this is unethical largely in part to the pharmaceutical company being misleading about their quiz, and the fact that they were aware of what they were designing the quiz to do. Armstrong’s take on professional ethics argues that confidentiality is an important professional requirement largely in part to it being among one of the large items that builds trust, but it is not without
limitations. In fact, Armstrong would likely take the stance that Sourour should have sounded the alarms when he found out exactly what his employer wanted him to do with the quiz, which would ultimately cause harm. Furthermore, Armstrong’s argument for professional ethics clearly states that it is an obligation that should be balanced among other ethical responsibilities, and more specifically, the responsibility to prevent harm to others and society.

Armstrong believed that confidentiality is valuable because it serves a purpose, and not just because it is a moral rule. This runs parallel to Sourour’s experience with his employer which should have been reported as it was of detriment to society. From Sourour’s perspective, it is possible that he feared legal repercussions as a result of breaking his confidentiality, or perhaps he felt morally obligated to follow through with his customer’s ideas. Regardless of how Sourour felt at that moment, he should have immediately reported the issues with what
he was being asked to do. Another concept from Armstrong is the idea of competing duties. Simply put, competing duties is the idea that professionals face routine conflicts between multiple job responsibilities or requirements. Armstrong argues that there is rarely ever just one ethical responsibility for any given job, and this leads to his
concept of competing duties. In Sourour’s case, there are many different competing duties that he was faced with. He had his employer who wanted him to modify the code to fit their needs, he had the requirement to respect the confidential nature of his employer’s information, Sourour also had the moral duty of protecting the private information of the patients who were taking the quiz, all while responsibly
conducting himself as a professional software engineer. This naturally creates many friction points, and no matter how he navigated these all, it required substantial delicacy. From an utilitarian perspective, no matter what, Sourour should have oriented his decision making to choose what was ultimately best for the
well-being of all despite what his employer wanted him to do. This ties with one of the last concepts from Armstrong that I will use to analyze this case, which is professional judgement.

Armstrong argues that professionals are hired not simply because they are good at the job, but because they are entrusted to use their professional judgement to get the job done correctly. In this case, Sourour used his professional judgement initially to just fulfill what his employer asked him to do. At the time, he likely saw this as a non-issue, partly because he had not been aware of exactly what he was setting up.
Armstrong would have likely seen his actions as failing to meet the concept of professional judgement because he was unable to make a sound decision on the ethics of creating a quiz with only one outcome. In the case of Bill Sourer and from a utilitarian perspective, his decision to do exactly as his employer wanted without hesitation or further pushback was of great detriment to society. As he would continue to reflect, a patient ended up losing her life as a result of the pharmaceutical companies’ medication. Now it may be easy to pin the blame on Bill for his decision making (or lack there of), yet there are many contributing factors as to why he likely made the choice he made. The pressures of trying to establish himself as a software engineer should not go unmentioned, and there are also the realities that his company may not have been as forthcoming with their decision making as they could have been. From
the ethical perspective of a utilitarian, the actions of both Bill and his employer were unethical, and at best, morally apprehensible. This case analysis highlights the many different ways engineers can unknowingly become a part of the problem within society, and how a company’s greed can cause harm to society when unquestioned and unchecked.