What would your IT Code of Ethics be? (MacAD UK)

[BScott]

Today, @TomBridge is in London presenting at MacAD UK along with a few other JumpCloudians. In his keynote, Tom is speaking about how his son is learning the outdoor code in scouting and how it got him thinking about an IT Code for IT professionals. He's introducing it as follows:

If we want to be good stewards of information and data, we need to be careful and responsible, right? We wanted to host a conversation here for those of you who couldn't make the conference.

I'm curious—if you were to write an IT Code for your organization, or for IT professionals in general, what would you put in it? Would you add to this?

[chadrick]

I feel like the code of ethics I hold myself and my teams to would be the same standard that I have myself every day. We can split hairs about best practices and baselines, but it really comes down to "do no harm" and "do the right thing at the right time for the right reasons." With a background in K12 and non-profit, it's crucial to not just address technology needs but also take a moment to consider why you do something. What effect does this have on users? What effect does this have on the mission of the organization I'm supporting? This is a fantastic thought exercise I'm going to keep kicking around. Something I'd like to write up into an actual mission statement for my team and build a discussion around. 

Very interested to see what feedback others in the community have concerning this idea. It should officially exist, but I've never encountered it in my career. 

[BScott]

@chadrick I love this and think that maybe a lot of people actually don't think about this enough. Do the policies we put in place really do no harm to our end users and customers? If you do a mission statement and have discussions around it, I'd love to hear more as you go through it (if you're willing to share).

[chadrick]

Absolutely! It's a bit odd to me I never thought of this before. Every company has a mission statement, and every IT team has a culture and a personality, but I've never thought to define an intentional mission statement for the IT team. I'm going to bring this up in our next manager's meeting and get a vibe check from everyone else. 

[TomBridge]

Having a charter for your team is so helpful to not just "gut checks" against what you're about to do, but also for day to day values building. I used to be pretty skeptical about it, but if it's part of your culture, it's part of your execution style.

[dagryph]

Do no harm for sure.

Make things easier to the point where it becomes more convenient than secure. People won't do things unless it's easy and makes their job easier, but people will push to be more convenient until they're told to stop.

Teach others, which not only spreads the workload, but also creates advocates on your behalf.

Share information, if you're worried about job security, hoarding information will not help with that. Sharing is caring.

[dagryph]

If your company has a mission statement, do one even if it's unofficial, so you and your team have a way forward. Having things like this in mind when going about your day will help decisions get made. As Maya Angelou once said, you don't know where you're going if you don't know where you've been, paraphrasing.