Being ethical in a company and having morals can be hard some time because what you believe in and what the company ethics are can be different. You might have to choose to follow one and reject the other. To choose which one to follow all depend on which one is more important, your morals or the company. Morals describe one’s particular values concerning what is right and what is wrong. Ethics is based on right and wrong that prescribe what humans ought to do, usually in terms of rights, obligations, and fairness. Morals and Ethics are both related to rights and wrong, but they are different. Morals refer to an individuals’ principles regarding right and wrong. Ethic refers to rules provided by an external source like codes of conduct in workplaces.
So, what would I do, if I am the CIO, and I knew that we were putting a software in our app that will report back to us about our competitor’s data? That question all depend on which one is more important to me, my morals or the company. If my morals are more important, I would not agree with the software. If the company is more important, I would agree with the software. At the end of the day, I would agree with the CEO. As of CIO, my job is to ensure the strategic vision of IT is in line with the strategic vision of the organization. The software will help the company compete with Amazon and Walmart. The customer will know that the app will send information about their shopping habits if they read the Terms and Service and End User License Agreement. They just don’t know it will help us compete better with Amazon and Walmart.
What I relied on to get my answer was morals and ethics. My morals would have said not to agree with the CEO, but ethics was more important. If putting the software in the app wasn’t ethical in the eyes of the company, I would have not agreed with it. It was ethical enough for the CEO to present the idea to the few executives of the firm. The Idea isn’t breaking any laws. It is only helping the company. The process of making my decision was deciding if putting this software in the app would break any laws. Next, was to determine if my individuals’ principles regarding right or wrong were more or less important than the rules provided for me by external sources. I believe this is nothing to get upset about because if you are following the law and have legal protection, you don’t have anything to worry about. If the app and software can help the company, I do not have anything to get upset about. My goal as a CIO is to ensure the delivery of all IT projects, on time and within budget and to ensure the strategic vision of IT is in line with the strategic vision of the organization. Implementing the software that brings data from our competitors’ applications will help us compete with Amazon and Walmart. Not agreeing with the idea would not be in line with the strategic vision of the company. So, at the end of the day, I agree 100% with the CEO idea.
