Last week I asked if a business continuity practitioner should refuse an assignment if the client places restrictions on the plan. This same issue could face an information assurance professional when working with a client. This week we take a look at benevolent deception.
Both DRII and BCI assert in their codes of ethics that the BC professional must act in the client’s best interests. But the problem is that a client could be mistaken about their best interests. What if the BC (or information assurance) professional is in a position to serve the client’s best interests by deceiving him or her? Consider the following case:
Exaggerating the Danger
A BC professional recognizes that her company’s data backup system is woefully inadequate by industry standards. But she also understands that the risk of total data failure is so small that the upper management is not likely to be persuaded to invest in a more reliable backup system. However, she could use some outdated server failure numbers to inflate the risk to the point where management will take notice. Would this be acceptable?
Most commentators do not think that this deception is permissible. But why is this? There are some cases where it might be permissible for a professional to deceive a client for the client’s best interests. Consider the following real life case:
Cancer Survival
By the time Lance Armstrong discovered that he had cancer, it had spread to his brain and filled up his lungs. His doctor gave him a 1% chance of survival, but he told Armstrong that he had a 50/50 chance of survival in order to keep his spirits up, knowing that having hope has been shown to increase a patient’s chances of surviving cancer. As we know, Armstrong survived. Did the doctor act wrongly?
Most people would say that the doctor did not act wrongly, even though he deceived Armstrong. The doctor applied what is known in the medical profession as “therapeutic benefit;” deceiving a patient for the patient’s own best interests.
Therapeutic benefit is used less and less often today as doctors recognize the patient’s right to be told the truth about their condition, even when the truth may hurt. There is no simple rule that will determine when benevolent dishonesty is permissible. Some have suggested a "thank you" theory which states that it is OK to deceive someone if they will thank you for it later, but of course it is hard to know if a “thank you” will along come later, especially when protecting again a threat that may never occur. Plus, what happens if the professional turns out to be wrong in his or her assessment?
I don’t have an answer here. I only raise these questions to generate discussion that will help the profession formalize the duties of the professional.
Last Week’s Quiz Question
What Vermont town is also the name of a foreign country?
This one is embarrassing. I thought that there was only one Vermont town that shared the name of a foreign country, but students found no fewer than four examples: Peru, Jamaica, Georgia, and Caledonia. Our winner is Linda Rosa. Congratulations Linda!
This Week’s Quiz Question
Why did Vermonters huddle around their television sets at 10:00am., on December 28, 2009?
Send your entries to jorlando@norwich.edu
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