Accounting Information Systems: The Processes and Controls, 2nd Edition

ETHICAL ISSUES RELATED TO DATA COLLECTION AND STORAGE (STUDY OBJECTIVE 11)

There are many ethical issues related to the collection, storage, and protection of data in databases. Companies collect and store a wealth of information about customers in their databases. These ethical issues related to such data in databases can be examined from three perspectives:

1. Ethical responsibilities of a company to its customers
2. Ethical responsibilities of employees to the company and its customers
3. Ethical responsibilities of customers to the company

The ethical responsibilities that companies have to customers revolve around collecting only necessary data from customers, properly protecting customer data, limiting the sharing of customer data, and correcting errors in customer data. The ethical responsibilities of employees is to avoid browsing through data or customer records unless necessity dictates, not selling customer data to competitors, and not disclosing customer data to related parties. Customers also have ethical responsibilities related to their providing data to companies that they deal with. These would include providing accurate and complete data when those data are necessary, and upholding the obligation not to disclose or use company data that they may have access to. Each of these types of responsibilities is discussed in detail in the sections that follow. This discussion of ethical issues is not intended to list and describe all ethical issues related to databases, but to ...