Just because you can, doesn't mean you should... thoughts on ethical product delivery

As we deliver products or services we have to make choices which will impact individuals or society at large - positively and or negatively. Some choices seem obvious: like not enabling arms development (unless, of course, your country is being invaded). Others choices are less obvious: that algorithm assessing the likelihood of an offender to reoffend, personalisation or loyalty features; what’s not to like about them? Well, they can all have nasty side-effects.

In this talk I will raise awareness of the ethical questions (and often conundrums) product-teams face, demonstrate why ethics matter and most importantly propose a framework for making ethically sound decisions in our day to day work on products and services.

This talk stands on its own, but if ethics interest you, why not dive even deeper, and join Neha Datt and I for our talk “The antidote to product management best practices”, also at LAS, which takes what I present here further and makes it even more tangible.

Participant takeaways:

• An awareness of ethical conundrums.
• A concept that can provide a “north star” for ethical choices.
• An understanding of how common product management best practices can easily lead to detrimental consequences and what we can do about it.
• An introduction to a framework to start their process towards more mindful and ethical decision making.

Themes:
Ethics, Decision making, Complexity, Product management, Product design, Service design, Agile, Lean.