A Web of Fuzzy Problems: Confronting the Ethical Issues

This article deals with ethical problems in systems development. Ethical problems can emerge in a systems design project whenever the legitimacy of the values and moral principals on which the participants base their acts and decisions are contested or questioned. For many engineering professions the standards of the field are being defined through the development of technical norms. Such norms are based on an immanet logic of quantity, standardization and focus on detail and promise some kind of guidance in the maze of fuzzy problems to be solved. Other types of norms can be found in the field of data security and data protection. Norms that pertain directly to large issues of social responsibility are currently being discussed within some professional organizations. Such ethical codes should clearly express the difference and tension between the obligation to watch legal and quasilegal norms on one hand and to take distance from these norms. The ethical codes have the advantage that they can act as some kind of guarantee to be taken into account.