Preparing IS Students to Deal With Ethical Issues

The recent series of ethics violations in business (e.g., insider trading) has caused a number of firms to begin courses in ethics for employees. Unless professionals improve their ethical practices, legislation will force them to do so. The ACM and DPMA curriculum recommendations include ethics topics. An important issue is the proper education of IS students to deal with on-the-job ethical situations. Unfortunately, ethics education gets lost among the myriad of subjects to be taught in IS courses. But there is an effective pedagogical approach for this material. The approach requires students to determine how they would act in various ethical scenarios. This "personalization” method may be the first step toward proper ethical behavior in the workplace. While not a rigorous scientific treatment of the subject, the classroom experiences reported here may be helpful for IS faculty and IS trainers as they develop improved ethics instruction.