Same as other engineering discipline software engineering have their own limitations and legal perspective to secure the social environment. There is no doubt that it software engineering job is more responsible then just develop an application. Software engineers have to be responsible of each and every action beside the application.
Such as their security, system integrity and privacy of application. Being a professional software engineers have to behave ethically and morally to reflect their responsibilities.
It is not necessary to explain these ethics each and every time when a software engineer join a software house. You should always have this normal standard of honesty and integrity being a professional engineer.
Beware of using your technical knowledge and skill to behave in any sense of dishonesty in the way it will create a dispute to software house. In the small environment sometimes these ethics are not applicable but by the notion of professional responsibility you must have to follow these ethics.
1 – Confidentiality
You must have to follow the confidentiality of the organisation, their current projects and products, information of their employees and other things which are included under the agreement of job by the employer.
2 – Competence
This is the major point which we have to follow being a professional. You should never misrepresent your skills and the level of competency. Some persons try to to show off their knowledge with the manipulation of contextual words. It will benefit you initially but in the long run you will get caught. So never accept any work which is out of your competency.
3 -Intellectual property rights
You must have the knowledge of the local governing law regarding the software import and export. Intellectual property is a very serious crime and sensitive issue. So never try to reuse property of any other organisation to extend your own product without giving them credit or until they will allow you to use their copyright product. This is enough sensitive issue that we can judge from Facebook and blackBerry lawsuit.
4 – Computer misuse
In the field of computer science, engineers try to misuse their systems which are provided by the employer to harm the integrity of organisation. It can be a cause of lawsuit against you to illegally use property of the organisation without their permission. For an example if organisation is not allowing you to play video games upon the personal system and you have installed the game that it will become a cause of computer misuse.
Many professional societies are working together to provide most appropriate ethical standards which can be followed by software engineers within any organization. Such as ACM, IEEE, British Computer Society and other professional societies suggested some code of ethics. Whenever any engineer have to join these societies, he or she have to undertake to follow their code of ethics to avail their membership & perks.