As someone in their early career whose primary profession is implementing technologies for non-technical consumers, my use of technology and how it impacts other people around me is more direct than others who do not work with technology on a daily basis. I am responsible for implementing and deploying network technologies, software, hardware, etc. My employers’ clients, acting as consumer-citizens in this case, interact with these technologies on a high-level and daily basis but typically do not understand how the technology functions.
When I communicate with these clients, I am to remember the ethics / rules of client confidentiality, which applies to my job as a professional in the IT industry. I interact with over 60 different client companies of varying size and structure, and I am neither allowed to mention that we are employed by XYZ client company in front of ZYX client company (unless XYZ client company is a publicly known client of ours, eg. client endorsements listed on our website). Not only that, but when I speak with the clients’ over the phone, I maintain a neutral tone as well as redact any identifiable information about our tools.
In the case of fairness, this state of “neutralness” is maintained for every client. In my eyes, fairness is simple: treating individuals and groups individually, without bias or discrimination. It would not be fair to treat one client’s personally identifiable information with neutrality, while treating the other’s PII information like sharable office papers.
The very individuals that make up each company / client have the right to their information being protected eg. safeguarded from disclosure without permission. “In most cases, confidentiality can be ensured by using good data collection and storage practices” (University of Virginia).
With proper methods of data storage, and safe data collection, the collected data will remain confidential. Your methods of storage and your employment situation, such as: working as a business owner, or working as an employee, does also affect the way you treat a client’s information.
My father, a man who had run businesses in the Fort Washington area for years, treated his clients well, and almost like family. If he made a mistake, he owned up to it. Not only that, he always made sure each client’s information was kept safe and separate from other clients, carefully placed in sectioned rows within labeled filing cabinets. This is different from what my current employer does (on a private cloud where all client documentation is stored in separate folders) but the concept remains the same.
Works Cited
Arnston, Paul. “Improving Citizens’ Health Competencies.” Health Communication, vol. 1, no. 1, Jan. 1989, pp. 29–34. DOI.org (Crossref), https://doi.org/10.1207/s15327027hc0101_4.
University of Virginia, Protecting Confidentiality, Human Research Protection Program (HRPP). https://hrpp.research.virginia.edu/teams/irb-sbs/researcher-guide-irb-sbs/protecting-confidentiality. Accessed 8 June 2025.
Shearer, Harry, and Nigel Warburton. “The Trolley Problem.” YouTube, 18 Nov. 2014, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bOpf6KcWYyw.