Technical communication occurs within a wide variety of professional sectors, including medicine, law, industry, and academia. In all of these sectors, communicators encounter several potential ethical issues and dilemmas. Whenever you join an organization, institution, or professional community, you should always familiarize yourself with their code(s) of conduct for technical and professional communication. Learning the expectations for your position will help you establish habits that reinforce your skills and practice as an ethical communicator.

Principles of Ethics in Technical and Professional Communication

In addition to specific codes of conduct, there are also some universal principles that technical and professional communicators can rely on to ensure that they apply their skills and present ideas ethically. The Society of Technical Communication (STC) offers six principles as focal points for practicing ethical communication^[1]:

1. 1. Legality. Are you aware of the laws and regulations relevant to your discipline and/or institution? Are you aware of the laws that apply to the scale of your project, study, or business, from local to international, and do you follow them in good faith?

1. 2. Honesty. Do you communicate honestly, both orally and in writing? Do you actively strive to provide clarity when your meaning might be misconstrued by your audience, intentionally or not? Do you give credit to the work and ideas of others who made substantial contributions? Do you respect your employers’ time and resources, and avoid taking advantage of either for your own purposes?

1. 3. Confidentiality. Do you respect the privacy of your clients, colleagues, students, employees, employers, and/or organization? Do you only share private information when legally obliged or with appropriate prior consent from involved parties?

1. 4. Quality. Do your written documents and oral presentations reflect your best work as a communicator? Do you promote transparency and realistic expectations when you communicate, so that you can meet your audience’s needs and perform ethically?

1. 5. Fairness. Do you recognize and honor diversity in your organization? Do you ensure that your clients’ and other stakeholders’ interests are served in alignment with the public good? Do you avoid and/or disclose potential conflicts of interest when engaging in professional activities?

1. 6. Professionalism. Do you constantly seek to refine your practice and skills as a technical communicator? Do you demonstrate empathy, respect, and constructive criticism when engaging with others and their technical communication skills? Do you make yourself an asset to the professional and communicative growth of others in your field or organization?

In addition to these six principles, a seventh principle might be considered security. As part of professional and ethical communication, employees need to be aware of the appropriate security protocols (mandated by law or company policy) to follow when releasing information and using company technologies. As companies increasingly rely on information technology to conduct business, cybersecurity is a growing concern. Certain information needs to be encrypted, and employees need to be able to recognize and report phishing attempts, suspicious links, programs with spyware and malware, and other risks. Carelessness with cybersecurity can lead to the loss of a job, besides potential larger negative consequences from malicious actors.

How Bias Influences Unethical Communication

You might notice that most of these ethics violations could easily happen accidentally. Directly lying is unlikely to be accidental, but even in that case, the writer could persuade themself that the lie achieved some “greater good” and was therefore necessary.

Even more common is an ethics violation resulting from the person who is designing the information seeing it as evidence for whatever they understand as true, and honestly not recognizing the bias in how they have presented that information.

Many ethics violations in technical writing are (probably) unintentional, but they are still ethics violations. That means a technical writer must consciously identify their biases and check to see if a bias has influenced any presentation: whether in charts and graphs, or in discussions of the evidence, or in source use or in placement of information.

For example, scholarly research is theoretically intended to fulfill one of two purposes.  Some scholarly research attempts to gather evidence   to evaluate whether a new idea  is valid and contributes to the field. Other research reviews or attempts to replicate previous work to cement its validity.

One example of a groundbreaking study is James Watson and Francis Crick’s 1953 paper “Molecular Structure of Nucleic Acids: A Structure for Deoxyribose Nucleic Acid.”  Watson and Crick expanded on the work of other researchers concerning DNA as the vehicle for genetic code.  In response to another model for DNA (a triple-helix) proposed by scientists Linus Pauling and Robert Corey, Watson and Crick proposed the double-helix model to convey how DNA transmits genes across organisms.  Their paper was reviewed by other scientists in their field in order to be published in the scientific journal Nature, and after decades of subsequent research their double-helix model is still favored by the majority of contemporary scientists.

As with all human endeavors, however, research is susceptible to bias and error. For example, a recent study on the interrelationship between gender, mentor relationships, and career success in academia received intense scrutiny for its flawed design. Published in the academic journal Nature Communications, the study claims that researchers earlier in their careers (particularly women) tend to produce less significant research the more female mentors they have; therefore, early career researchers should seek out male mentors instead.^[5] Many other scientists critical of the study, however, pointed out that the study did not provide a concrete, functional definition of mentorship or senior standing, did not account for institutional bias in favor of men as a factor, and made the false assumption that more citations equals more career success.^[6] Subsequent to this criticism, the journal chose to retract the article, nullifying the rhetorical situation and the validity of the communication.^[7]

In practice, most folks are primarily looking for support: “Hey, I have this great new idea that will solve world hunger, cure cancer, and make mascara really waterproof. Now I just need some evidence to prove I am right!” However, if you can easily find 94 high-quality sources that confirm you are correct, you might want to consider whether your idea is worth developing. Often in technical writing, the underlying principle is already well-documented (maybe even common knowledge for your audience), and you should instead use that underlying principle to propose a specific application.

Using a large section of your document to prove an already established principle implies that you are saying something new about the principle—which is not true. A brief mention (“Research conducted at major research universities over the last ten years (see literature review, Smith and Tang, 2010) establishes that…”) accurately reflects the status of the principle; then you would go on to apply that principle to your specific task or proposal.