Digital Ethics:
A 21st Century Challenge
Future Thinking & Strategy
“The business benefits of Ethical Digital are clear”
- Agility: use new technology now
- Commercial: ethical competitive advantage
- Talent: ethical values attract talent
- Risk management: – anticipate & mitigate risk
Source: Quantum Black
Automation is embedded in every aspect of business life – sometimes with unforeseen consequences – meaning a close look at digital ethics is compelling. Orchestrating shared conversations about technology-mediated behaviours and their impact on others puts organizations in a strong position to mitigate risk and unlock innovation.
Drawing on findings from research and client engagements, Leading Edge Forum guides leaders through the nascent field of digital ethics. “Doing right” with technology is a nuanced endeavour, involving software engineers, lawyers, marketers and many others.
Good ethics are good business
With enterprises processing vast amounts of data sourced from different places, and in a technoscape that increasingly includes artificial intelligence, it’s hard to opt out of technologically-mediated life. 21st century digital strategy requires an ethical framework, built on broad participation that considers all actions and eventualities flowing from ubiquitous data usage and automation.
This workshop explores the digital ethical landscape. Organizations rising to the digital ethics challenge and engaging with ethical complexity create opportunities that:
- Appeal to customers who want ethical providers
- Attract scarce talent e.g. AI professionals & data scientists
- Mitigate systemic inequalities & contribute to public good
- Increase competitive edge against unethical actors
What LEF offers
We help you elevate ethical digital from a pure compliance context, instead putting it on your innovation and operational agenda. We address risks and harms at play using LEF’s evolutionary Ethical Digital framework to explore different ethical choices as products and services mature, and examine your sector’s technoscape using the three levers of Reputation, Regulation and Revenue to drive corporate decision making and determine your ethical stance.
Develop an ethical perspective
Much thinking about the use of AI has coalesced around four principles that hold good for the broader digital ethics debate and make a sound starting point. Data and automation must be fair, explainable, transparent and accountable. This quartet of ideals can be applied to an enterprise’s business operations and goals in order to create a framework for ethics in action and the accompanying mechanisms for oversight.
In such an abstract discussion, there may be a temptation to offload the task onto legal teams, software engineers and designers who might then work on it separately. But the best frameworks benefit from diverse input and draw on different ethical schools of thought to arrive at an optimal framework for the individual enterprise: a sustainable approach towards ethics evolution while a company is moving at scale.
“Ethical Digital integrates the disciplines of Ethically Aligned Design into code, products & services. It is a different mindset & new methodology designed to enhance products & services for ethical markets, reduce risk & scale up the value created for citizens & society.”
Tour Findings, Ethical Digital Study Tour, LEF 2019
Customize existing codes of conduct
Sectors including finance, insurance, defence and healthcare are early movers in digital ethics. Working in heavily regulated environments, they must be forward-thinking about the consequences of their actions. Existing mechanisms governing each sector’s digital behaviour provide a sound basis to develop ethical principles.
Workshop agenda
Through a combination of presentations and breakout working sessions, the outcome of the day will be to identify and clarify ethical risks and needs to innovate in your business. We’ll take a deeper dive on specific options, with an agreed action plan and next steps for accountability, enablers and conditions for success.
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Workshop session
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Outcome
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Introductions & objectives
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Set expectations
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Agitate: the architecture of ethics
Introduce key ethical concepts & structures to build confidence in approach & make connection back to your environments
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Level set & build alignment on ‘ethical risks’ & enumerate options for change
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Activate: identify digital ethical needs
What to build & where? How can you use ethics to add value to your business?
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Identify key problem group will work on & understand group alignment
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Activate: build out an approach for you
Review business against ‘Ethics of Evolution’ framework (PSTP) Make choices about where to go deeper
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Identify deeper dive on specific organizational area & options to move forward
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Accelerate: establish conditions for success
Review accountability & commitment. Where does digital ethical sit & who’s involved?
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Agree governance, enablers & craft action plan
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Action: confirm what next
Review outcomes & agree accountabilities to progress journey
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Agreed action plan
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Understand why & how a digital ethics framework would work in your organization
Identify the necessary & wide range of stakeholders
Review where you have institutional alignment
Create a set of problem statements to discuss in a focused session on
problem-solving
