Fostering ethically mature organizations
Part 2 of 2: Establishing an Ethics Infrastructure in Corporate Tech
Coauthor: Lexi Neigel
In the first part of this series, we talked about why ethics needs to be core to UX research in corporate tech. The goal of user researchers is to advocate for user needs and craft better experiences — which ultimately increases a corporation’s profit. To carry out our work and that of our company, ethics needs to be central to our employers’ practices, not just ours.
As we discussed in Part One, ethical research somehow seems to be at odds with corporate goals, which can at times mean profit > people. For this reason, ethics and a team supporting the infrastructure for ethics to grow and thrive tend to be an afterthought.
This underscores ethical maturity, or how well a corporate institution understands, nurtures, and grows ethical practices.
Ethical practices may feel like just another thing on a researcher’s plate, which we absolutely get! But we are not here to put the onus entirely on researchers in corporate tech.
Ethics are the responsibility of everyone in the company.
That said, researchers, and to some extent data scientists, have the unique position of being the customer success strategist. Our roles are tied to how and when customers’ data are used inside the company. This responsibility puts us much closer to ethical issues than others, and we argue that researchers have stronger odds for implementing ethical best practices compared to other roles in the company.
In this part of the series, we walk through what is needed to successfully implement ethical research practices based on the company’s ethical maturity and resources.
Understanding Ethical Maturity
Each organization has its own level of maturity when it comes to ethical research practices.
Some corporations have very little, if any, guidance around these issues. This can manifest as a limited infrastructure that may look something like:
- Small research teams or a ‘research team-of-one’
- Few guiding ethical principles or none at all
- Limited training or knowledge around ethical practices
Conversely, more ethically mature organizations will demonstrate a strong infrastructure to support ethical research and best practices.
Such companies employ entire teams dedicated to ongoing review cycles that ensure end users (and the greater community) are not harmed by technology, design, engineering, research, or data collection and retention.
These dedicated teams may help educate engineers, designers, and product managers about how to implement ethical research practices and oversight, with special emphasis toward understanding the importance of protecting end users.
The ethical maturity-infrastructure matrix may look a bit like this:
Assessing Ethical Maturity
In Part One of this series, we closed with a list of questions that researchers can use to reflect on whether or not their individual practices are ethical.
Another series of questions can guide your conversations with stakeholders to better understand their current thinking, practices, and processes regarding ethics.
When talking to stakeholders, collaborators, and leaders across the company, ask them for thoughtful and meaningful responses to questions around people, process, and documentation:
People
- Are researchers self-auditing their research practices?
- Do we have an ethics committee that can review our research studies and processes?
- What is our organizational understanding of the risks or harms that may be induced by the technology or experience we’re designing and developing?
- Is training available for employees to learn about and incorporate ethics into existing practices?
Process
- Do we have the means to securely and responsibly store user data?
- Were users informed about our data storage practices and do they understand how to delete their data?
- Do we treat participants in studies equitably? Have any persons been harmed during or as a result of the study, or the technology being studied?
- To what extent are our research practices meeting and/or exceeding ethical standards?
Documentation
- Do we have a standardized informed consent for participants to review?
- Are participants aware of the benefits and/or harms associated with the research and technology being tested?
- How are these considerations and informed consent recorded?
- Do we have a documentation process to ensure ethical research practices are followed and auditable?
- Is there a repository to store ethics reviews for continuous auditing?
Note: this is not an exhaustive list but one that provides a starting point for conversations around ethical maturity within your organization.
The themes that emerge from these conversations will add texture and clarity for understanding your organization’s current level of ethics maturity.
These are pointed and potentially sensitive questions, especially considering the recent news coverage of ethics violations in corporate tech. Responses can help you measure individual stakeholder awareness and understanding, while identifying any hesitancies toward implementing ethical practices.
These valuable insights will also help you understand your colleagues’ current mental model of ethical maturity, which will aid in process implementation and gaining company-wide support.
A Process for Improving Ethical Maturity
Determining your organizations’ ethical maturity will take some time. Getting a holistic picture of individual stakeholder maturity and overall organizational maturity requires ongoing conversations and reflection on current practices.
While this is happening, you can draw from aspects of the Ethical Review Process (below) to begin implementing ethical research and practices as an individual contributor.
For organization’s with no ethical research infrastructure, there is a blank slate from which to build these best practices. In some ways, the researcher here has more freedom to develop and implement ethics processes compared to companies with more established or static research/stakeholder relationships.
We recommend starting with the simple five-point audit shown above that can be incorporated into existing workflows.
When creating the research protocol, incorporate a short, 1–2 paragraph write up that summarizes the core ethical considerations. Including this short analysis lets you double dip by (a) implementing an easy-to-adopt documentation process while (b) introducing partners to ethical research considerations.
At the conclusion of your study — prior to broadly sharing the findings — come back to this ethics review cycle. Summarize the ethical implications of your work, the product or experience, and its (potential) impact on the larger community. Include the considerations that you’ll carry forward into your next study.
Consider collaborating with key partners to create this final 1–2 paragraph summary. Working through these topics together will help others continue thinking about these issues while working on the product or experience. Attach the write up to your final report and any deliverables.
Gathering advocates for ethical research as a “steering committee” or an ad-hoc group will boost your organization from a team of one into limited infrastructure. This small group can use the practices established by individual contributors to create ethics processes for others to adopt across the entire organization.
Standardization and continuous evaluation is key.
Active and ongoing conversations with leadership will likely start with the individuals, as we suggested above. Having broader conversations with more than one person advocating becomes paramount for moving from a limited infrastructure to a moderate one.
Processes, tools, and best practices are great for the individual and small groups of researchers across the company. But if there is no buy-in from partner teams and leadership to block unethical work, researchers sit at an impasse.
An organization with higher maturity and more infrastructure will provide this mechanism. These organizations may be established enough to conduct ongoing ethical research reviews, and have strong stakeholder and leadership buy-in throughout the process.
A fully-fledged ethical research team and organization may have multiple teams of teams that collaborate with one another to understand opportunity areas for ethics.
Within this team of teams, different initiatives will be spearheaded to increase the organization’s ethical maturity. Perhaps one group may be focused entirely on conducting ethical research training, workshops, and developing ethics principles that teams can use in their day-to-day work. Another may work on foundational research related to the treatment of persons as well as data protection and privacy.
Going Forward
Ethics is a process, not a place in time.
Ethically mature organizations provide the means and ability to create ethical research processes and can demonstrate progress in these areas over time.
Have additional ideas, questions, thoughts, or perspective you would like to share? Please reach out and connect with us — we would love to learn more about you, ethics in your organizations, and how you’re navigating the charged waters of research ethics in corporate tech.
