Communications - October 2008

Vviewpoints

DOI: 10.1145/1400181.1400190

Computing Ethics
Computer Experts:
Guns-for-Hire or Professionals?

Considering the responsibilities of those who build systems fundamental to significant social functions, institutions, and values.

IN THE 1980S, when I first began thinking and writing about ethics and computing, there was much speculation about how computing would and should develop as an occupation or a set of occupations. At that time, of course, one had to turn to the histories of other fields to learn about paths to professionalization. With more than 25 years behind us, the picture remains unclear. What is the state of the field of computing now and where should it go? Professionalization is of interest not for its own sake, but for what it would do to promote a socially responsible deployment of computing expertise. To get quickly to the heart of the matter, we might use a distinction as a foil: although it oversimplifies a complex situation, the distinction between guns-for-hire and professionals frames the issues of professionalization in stark form. A gun-for-hire is someone who puts his or her expertise up for sale to the highest bidder; he or she will do anything anyone wants as long as it is legal. By contrast, and in what is admittedly an idealized paradigm, professionals have standards; they take responsibility, individually and collectively, for setting standards of practice acknowledging that law is limited and will not adequately protect the values that should guide the field. Typically, professions act collectively through an organization that promulgates and enforces a code of ethics and professional conduct, and that articulates the core

values of the profession, for example life (in medicine), safety (in engineering), and accuracy (in auditing). Are computer experts guns-for-hire or professionals?

Sociological accounts of professions have suggested that we think of professions as systems or mechanisms for managing expertise. A group convinc-

es society that restrictions should be placed on who engages in a particular occupation. It convinces society there is a body of knowledge that should be mastered before one practices, for example, before one treats the sick or represents another in a court of law or audits a financial statement. The group convinces society that competence can only be determined by those who have already mastered the relevant body of knowledge. Thus, experts, not outsiders, should be in charge of specifying requirements for the field and deciding who has met the requirements.

When a group successfully makes these claims, society grants the group the power of self-regulation. However, this power is granted in exchange for the group’s commitment to manage its activities to achieve social good, or at least not in ways that are harmful to society. When doctors professionalized, the intention was to distinguish themselves from “charlatans” and “quacks,” those who claimed they could heal patients but who had no scientific understanding of how the human body worked. Once the system of medicine was established, patients could expect that when they went to a “doctor,” they would be treated by someone with a certain level of competence. This serves the interests of those who are sick and, in turn, the broader society.

Professionalization often occurs against a backdrop of concerns about the pressures of the marketplace; that is, professionalization is targeted, in part at least, to take certain issues out of the marketplace. When an occupational group has specified standards and articulated its values, then members will (at least, they are expected to) refuse to do anything inconsistent with those standards and values—no matter how much a client or customer is willing to pay. The standards and values become part of the professional culture.