Response to case study scenario 1
This scenario provides a compelling predicament, should I keep quiet, or should I go against my supervisor’s wishes and take action?
On the one hand, having worked as a quality assurance engineer during my year in industry, I can understand that as a junior test engineer, it would be my responsibility to work as instructed by my superior and I would be focused on impressing and performing well within my role. I would also be mindful that drawing negative publicity towards myself, my superiors or the company, could have the possibility of damaging mine and the companies’ reputations and therefore be detrimental towards my future employment prospects and could stunt my career aspirations.
However, ethically, one could not take lightly, the potential danger and damage associated with the described fault and merely ignore the fact that, if no action were to be taken, many innocent employees or customers of the client company would unknowingly be placed at risk. Furthermore, I would be aware that in failing to take action, I would be breaking both the
Institute of Engineering and Technologies’ eighth Rule of Conduct and the
British Computer Society's first Code of Conduct, which states that
“In your professional role you shall have regard for the public health, safety and environment”, and that in doing this, a complaint could be made to the BCS, resulting in legal action being taken against the company.
Therefore, I would feel compelled to make a wholehearted appeal to my supervisor in order to convince him to warn the client company and recall the product. Not only would I be able to appeal to him, based on the morality of the decision, but also on the consequences of such a fire hazard occurring. I would explain that despite only a 1.5 percent failure rate of the power consumption test, this statistic still illustrates a significant enough problem, and it would only take one fire hazard over the lifetime of the USB drives to potentially cause huge financial damage and possibly place people’s lives at risk. I would demonstrate my understanding that the recall of such a large order from a valued customer, would be at a significant financial cost, and would also have the potential to be somewhat humiliating for the company. But would explain that if taking into account the negative publicity and the huge legal costs that could ensue, should the product lead to a fire, the initial costs of a recall should undoubtedly be considered negligible.
If however, this attempt were to fail, then I would have no option other than to take the matter higher, going over my supervisor’s head and talking to somebody in a more senior position within the company. Should they also fail to act, then I feel I would be left with two viable courses of action. Either to contact the client directly and alert them of the potential fire hazard and the seriousness of the consequence of such a failure or to contact a representative from within the media and let them publicise the problem. This final course of action would obviously be a somewhat destructive approach and would almost certainly lead to my demise within the company and most probably result in my unemployment, but my honesty may indeed be considered honourable and be rewarded by a more worthy, honest employer.
Having investigated this matter, it appears to ring surprisingly close to a problem encountered with Sony USB, fingerprint security, pen drives. The problem was discovered with Sony’s
MicroVault software that they distributed with the pen drives, as it presented a similar security threat to the one caused by their much publicised rootkit software, that was released on their Compact Discs two years previous.
F-Secure, an internet based security company, were first to discover this potential security threat and felt compelled to inform Sony of their discovery. However, after Sony’s failure to respond, F-Secure felt ethically obliged to alert the public in order to minimise the potential damage that could be caused by Sony’s mistake and failure to act upon it
(1). It was this example that helped me to understand my moral obligation to the customer and assisted me in outlining my response.
1. http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/09/04/sony_fingerprint_rootkit_update
