Professional and Ethical Compliance Code

Question: Discuss about the Professional and Ethical Compliance Code. Answer: Introduction: The ACS Code of Ethics is basically a part of the ACS Constitution. Being an ACS member, it is important to follow some guidelines and one should always advance the honor, dignity and maintain effectiveness of being a professional. In the following case study, a security administrator of a company of 500 employees is asked by his manager to present a weekly report on which web pages has been accessed by individual employees and should try to flag those websites which contains inappropriate contents and which are questionable (Elliott 2016). But he remembers that the employees have not been asked to sign in any agreement where there is a guideline on which website they can visit and which not. But on the other hand, he is also aware that if the report is presented then the employees would be penalized for their misconduct in the office premises (Leicester 2016). The ethical dilemma that the person is currently facing is that he needs to make a report on who is accessing which websites and have to present it to his manager but the problem is that the employees were under no agreement that they have to view this or that particular website (Leicester 2016). With this he is also facing another dilemma that if he present that report, the employees would be penalized for which everybody will blame him. One thing he can do is to talk to his managers and tell them that the employees were not under any agreement. If they really want to know something like this, they need to update their policies about this particular issue and after this he can present a report as if the report is presented earlier, the employees may question about the authenticity of the data and they can counter themselves by saying that nothing was written on the policies when they were signing them (Board 2014). This misconduct can fall into three main ACS Code of Conducts like The Primacy of the Public Interest, Honesty and Professionalism (acs.org.au 2017). Under Primacy of the Public Interest, the company should not try to interfere with the intellectual property of others as that is totally personal and no one would like that anyone sniffing into their personal life (acs.org.au 2017). Also with this, they should try to provide the confidentiality and provide privacy to the users information and not look into their personal matter of what they are browsing or searching over the internet. Under Honesty, the employees should know the difference between professional life and personal life. When working in an office, they should try to maintain the decency and should not browse the websites which are explicitly offensive so they should keep their personal interest out of office premises and maintain the dignity (acs.org.au 2017). Under Professionalism, companies should take appropriate actions on those who break the rules so that it may set an example on others so that others may not break the rules and regulation like in this case, the employees who are accessing the website should be held guilty and appropriate actions should be taken against them so that other employees will not access the site again (acs.org.au 2017). Also, employees should co-operate with the company as whatever steps they take, they are taking for the betterment of the company as well as the employees. Every employee in an organization should follow all the norms and policies and should try to maintain decency in the office premises. Also the company personnel should revise their policies timely in order to overcome the defects that are present within the company like this company should have done with the accessibility of website for the employees. As there were no guidelines, they got the freedom to access these websites. References Leicester, N., 2016. Ethics in the IT Profession: Does a Code of Ethics have an Effect on Professional Behaviour?. Board, B.A.C., 2014. Professional and ethical compliance code for behavior analysts.Retrieved April,7, p.2016. acs.org.au (2017). [online] Available at: https://www.acs.org.au/content/dam/acs/.../Code-of-Professional-Conduct_v2.1.pdf [Accessed 24 Mar. 2017]. Elliott, C.M., 2016. A Framework for Ethical Decisions.