Preparing technology teams to make ethical decisions

- Technology teams face some special challenges when it comes to ethical decision making. You know, teams are asked to build new technologies for business challenges, but they're not always asked to consider upfront the social expectations and challenges that come with that design. Together we'll explore some ethical dilemmas that might face technology teams and learn together how to create a culture that promotes ethical decision making and accountability. Technology teams are unique in large organizations. First, they're often composed of individuals with really specific skills and expertise, which is frequently not so well understood by others in the organization, and sometimes even by the team's own managers. Second, technology teams often work at an extremely fast pace under tight deadlines. This means they have little extra time and resources to audit or to reflect on the consequences of their decisions on users or on the wider society. And finally, technology teams are often subject to specific regulatory requirements, for example, GDPR and associated laws in Europe. All of these considerations mean that it's important that technology teams have a strong, internal ethical culture, along with external oversight and accountability, to make sure that we are making decisions ethically. Ethical decisions that technology teams might face include: ensuring the security and privacy of data collection; storage, use and reuse; creating and auditing algorithms to ensure that they're fair and they're free from bias; and understanding the data storage and other environmental impact of their decisions and considering opportunities to reduce technology's carbon footprint. Can you think of any others? Every team will face their own unique ethical challenges, which is why it's vital to foster a culture of ethical decision making, one where teams can respond to an array of challenges as they arise, or even, hopefully, prevent them from arising in the first place. Here's a few steps you can take to create a culture of ethical decision making. First, foster a culture of ethical communication within your team. Encourage every team member to openly raise questions and concerns about the ethical use of technology. Here's an idea. Start meetings by focusing on a recent ethical challenge that your team faced and discussing how it was resolved. Reward and celebrate team members who appropriately raise and resolve ethical issues and make it a part of your day to day. Next, you might consider establishing a technology-specific training curriculum for your team, focusing on emerging technologies and the ethical challenges that team members might face when they begin to deploy them. You should explicitly consider ethical challenges at the start of every project. Before launching a new initiative, your team should come together to discuss possible ethical dilemmas and consider potential remediations and decide on a path forward. And when you feel like you need extra support, you should reach out to academics or philosophers, individuals who can help your team understand the full spectrum of ethical challenges that might fit within your work and bring them into a framework focused on advancing both your product and social wellbeing. Giving your technology team the tools to ensure that they can make decisions that align with the company's values and wider social ethics is essential. It sets your team up for success and it empowers them to solve new challenges as they arise in the future.