Confidentiality in Professions Ethics.pptx

Confidentiality in Professions Ethics

1. Confidentiality in Professions Atiq ur Rehman

2. Summary What is Confidentiality Justification of Confidentiality Confidentiality Types Confidentiality and Changing Jobs Confidentiality and Management Policies Limits of Confidentiality

3. Tracy Kidder in his Pulitzer Prize winning book The Soul of a New Machine . Kidder ends his book by quoting a regional sales manager speaking to the sales representatives preparing to market the new computer: “What motivates people?’ he asked. He answered his own question, saying, ‘Ego and the money to buy things that they and their families want”.

4. Confidentiality “Confidentiality is the duty to keep secret all information deemed desirable to keep secret. Deemed by whom? Basically, it is any information that the employer or client would like to have kept secret to compete effectively against business rivals”. Often this is understood to be any data concerning the company’s business or technical processes that are not already public knowledge. But more appropriately it points to the employer or client as the main source of the decision as to what information is to be treated as confidential. “Keep secret” is a relational expression. It always makes sense to ask, “Secret with respect to whom?”.

5. Confidentiality: Justification On what moral basis does the confidentiality obligation rest, with its wide scope and obvious importance? The primary justification is to respect the autonomy (freedom, self determination) of individuals and corporations and to recognize their legitimate control over some private information concerning themselves. All the major ethical theories (right, duty, utilitarian, virtue) recognize the importance of autonomy. Additional justifications include trustworthiness. There are public benefits in recognizing confidentiality relationships within professional contexts.

6. Confidentiality: Types Privileged information means “available only on the basis of special privilege,” such as the privilege accorded an employee working on a special assignment. Proprietary information is information that a company owns or is the proprietor of. A rough synonym for “proprietary information” is trade secret, which can be virtually any type of information that has not become public, which an employer has taken steps to keep secret, and which is thereby given limited legal protection in common . Patents legally protect specific products from being manufactured and sold by competitors without the express permission of the patent holder. Trade secrets have no such protection, and a corporation can learn about a competitor’s trade secrets through legal means for instance, “reverse engineering,” But patents do have the drawback of being public and thus allowing competitors an easy means of working around them by finding alternative designs.

7. Confidentiality and Changing Jobs The obligation to protect confidential information does not cease when employees change jobs. If it did, it would be impossible to protect such information. Former employees would quickly divulge it to their new employers or, perhaps for a price, sell it to competitors of their former employers. The relationship of trust between employer and employee in regard to confidentiality continues beyond the formal period of employment. Unless the employer gives consent, former employees are barred indefinitely from revealing trade secrets. Confidentiality is often compromised by engineers due to career advancement, R&D related jobs, same type of work, an employment sought on the basis of using trade secrets etc.

8. Confidentiality and Changing Jobs: Examples A high-profile case of trade secret violations was settled in January 1997 (without coming to trial) when Volkswagen AG (VW) agreed to pay General Motors Corporation (GM) and its German subsidiary Adam Opel $100 million in cash and to buy $1 billion in parts from GM over the next seven years. Because in March 1993, Jose Ignacio Lopez, GM’s highly effective manufacturing expert, left GM to join VW, a fierce competitor in Europe, and took with him not only three colleagues and knowhow, but also copies of confidential GM documents. Donald Wohlgemuth, a chemical engineer who at one time was manager of B.F. Goodrich’s space suit division. Dissatisfied with his salary and the research facilities at B.F. Goodrich, Wohlgemuth negotiated a new job with International Latex Corporation as manager of engineering for industrial products which got a huge order to prepare Appolo Astronauts space suits. The issue was decided in court in favor of Wohlgemuth’s personal right to seek career advancement, however he was forbade from revealing trade secrets. To fully protect the secrets of an old employer on a new job would thus virtually require that part of the engineer’s brain be removed.

9. Confidentiality and Management Policies What might be the ways to legitimize the interests and rights of engineers and other employees while also recognizing the rights of employers; Employment contracts that place special restrictions on future employment. Employment contract provisions like pension and other benefits. Placing tighter controls on the internal flow of information by restricting access to trade secrets except where absolutely essential. Employers may try to generate a sense of professional responsibility among their staff that reaches beyond merely obeying the directives of current employers. In this way, professional concerns and employee loyalty can become intertwined and reinforce each other.

10. Confidentiality: Limits Some time used to hide misdeeds. Investigations into a wide variety of white-collar crimes covered up by management in industry or public agencies have been thwarted by invoking confidentiality or false claims of secrecy based on national interest.

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