Perceived levels of ethical responsibilities for a software engineer: computing academics' perspective

Software engineering codes of ethics and standards of practice are a way for the profession to express its position about the responsibilities of software engineers in the production of software. It is therefore expected that software engineering companies will take responsibility at an organizational level. Equally, at individual level, we expect software engineers to take ethical responsibility for the work they do. Studies indicate the importance of evaluating how these responsibilities are shared to ensure that all the role players understand the kind and level of their responsibilities. The study surveyed educators in a computing faculty to determine what they perceive as appropriate levels of responsibilities, and how they attribute the responsibilities to the role players. The paper reveals a distributive order of responsibility in terms of the measures used in the study. It also shows that educators believe software engineers are responsible for the quality of their work, and that the public interest is of paramount importance. Furthermore, people in authority who approve decisions around functionality, and other role players such as designers, test engineers and users, need to take responsibility as well.