The responsibilities of Professionals

You likely have your own ethical code that you follow when making choices. However, what do you do in a situation where your ethical code clashes with something else? Personal ethics can, and will, inevitably clash with someone else's, the law, other cultures and even your work. As you improve yourself as a technology professional, the chances of these clashes occurring only grow higher.

Consider the following scenario:

You are working as a software developer in an online e-commerce organisation. Your job is to maintain the online catalogue that lists the products, their features, customers' feedback and the prices of these products that your organisation sells online. Your manager has asked you to ‘fabricate' several positive customer responses to a new product in the catalogue so as to draw attention to this new product and to publish these comments on the online catalogue. Normally, you would do whatever your work responsibilities require, but as a technology professional, do you have ethical responsibilities beyond adherence to company policies and goals? How do you react to the manager's request and would you comply with it or not? What would you do? In this Discussion, you will analyse these questions and determine what responsibilities you have, if any, beyond those to your company. You will also evaluate the best course of action and explain your reasoning behind it.