Moral Responsibilities of Computer Professionals

Some ethicists believe that all professionals, regardless of their practice, have speal moral obligations as professionals. For example, Michael Bayles (2003) argues that professionals have a special obligation to
their clients to be worthy of a client’s trust, and this, Bayles further suggests, leads to obligations of honesty, candor, competence, diligence, loyalty and discretion.

Many computer professionals are software engineers or members of software engineering teams. Gotternbarn (2001) believes that because software engineers and their teams are responsible for developing safety-critical systems, they have significant opportunities to:

* Do good or cause harm
* Enable others to do good or cause harm
* Influence others to do good or cause harm

Thus, Gotternbarn suggests that the roles and responsibilities involved in the development of safety-critical systems are differentiating factor.

Kevin Bowyer (2001) points out that the phrase “safe-critical system” is often used to refer to computer systems that can have a “direct life-threatening impact”. Examples of safety-critical software applications typically include:

* Aircraft and air traffic control systems
* Mass transportation systems
* Nuclear systems
* Missile systems
* Medical treatment systems