History of the Code of Ethics
Marshall Kaplan was the keynote speaker at the 1986 URISA meeting in Denver Colorado. His message was simple, "Consider the impact of your work," but I couldn't get it out of my mind. A simple plan to redevelop an old shopping center could ruin some existing businesses. Maybe those businesses met the needs of nearby ethnic community. Someone needs to raise the question of whether society is better off. Whether some ethnic groups are unfairly disadvantaged? Whether there are alternatives? The GIS professional working on that plan should raise those questions so they can be discussed.
I thought a code of ethics might provide some guidance, but had little experience with such codes. I wrote to over 100 professional organizations and asked for a copy of their codes. Today, a good source of such information would be Center for the Study of Ethics in the Professions (CSEP) at the Illinois Institute of Technology (http://www.iit.edu/departments/ csep/). In looking through those codes, I saw a trend towards thinking about the consequences of actions, as demanded by Kaplan, and of focusing attention on obligations to society, employers, colleagues, and individuals at large. I distilled my findings into a paper published in the 1993 URISA Journal called, "A GIS Code of Ethics: What Can We Learn >From Other Organizations?" See http://www.urisa.org/certification/craigeth.pdf.
When URISA was initiating its certification effort, I agreed to chair the ethics committee because the effort included the participation of other major GIS-oriented professional organizations. Our draft efforts struggled with three major issues that we saw as ethical: service to the community, recognizing the unique situation of minority groups, and avoiding conflicts with engaged colleagues. I feel the final wording strikes an appropriate balance in each case. Other critiques argued we had been too general on the one hand or too specific on the other so I feel that, here too, we must have hit an appropriate balance.
The code is based on the ethical principle
of always treating others with respect
and never merely as means to an end.
It requires us to consider the impact of our
actions on other persons and to modify our
actions to reflect the respect and concern
we have for them. These ideas came from
geographer and philosopher Emanuel Kant
Basic Philosophy
The code is based on the ethical principle of always treating others with respect and never merely as means to an end. It requires us to consider the impact of our actions on other persons and to modify our actions to reflect the respect and concern we have for them. Interestingly, these ideas came from the geographer and philosopher Emanuel Kant (1724-1804), so there are common roots for the GIS professional. Kant believes in deontology, following rules, but his rules are tied to consequences - sometimes considered a separate philosophy. Kant's deontology provided the philosophical basis for the obligations I had deduced by analyzing the many codes I had read a decade earlier. Other philosophies offered promise, but were found lacking. Utilitarianism calls for action that maximizes everyone's happiness, but ignores that sorrow that might be wracked on a minority.
Mother Teresa provides a wonderful example of goodness, but how can one know how even a saint would respond to a complex scientific problem? Following tenants of goodness is similarly flawed and, besides, leaves no room for reason; for example, not telling lies when caught behind enemy lines
und told to disclose the names and locations of colleagues. Even religion can be an unstable philosophy for proper action because one must decide which religion and, to our sorrow, history has shown that disputes over which group has God on their side has led to untold misery.
Fortunately, the world's major religions are in agreement on the issue of how we should treat other people. That issue is a central value for all of them. Christianity has its Golden Rule, "Do unto others as you have them do unto you." One of the most important sayings of Mohammed is "There is not to be any causing of harm (dharaar) nor is there to be any reciprocating of harm (dharaar)." The Hindu epic Mahabharata says "This is the sum of duty: Do naught unto others which would cause you pain if done to you."
Implications for Daily Life
Thinking ethically can solve a lot of problems. One has to wonder how much effort Enron officials or auditors spent worrying about the consequences of their actions on society, or their employees, or individual stock-holders. People at the top of that organization developed a scheme to make the company appear profitable, but was there any thought to the long-term implications of that scheme? What about the people lower in the hierarchy who could see that normal practices were being subverted? Where was the respect for others? Maybe some questions asked early could have kept this company from collapsing and doing enormous harm to thousands of people.
Things are not so simple in real life. One simply cannot sign a Code of Ethics to become instantly righteous, even with careful thought before taking action. Too often, two courses of "right" actions are open, but in conflict with each other. A pair of case studies will illustrate this point.
