Ex 20.10
Q: You work for a software company that has developed a system that provides information about consumers and that is used within a SoS by a number of other retail businesses. They pay you for services used. Discuss the ethics of changing the system interfaces without notice to coerce users into paying higher charges. Consider this question from the point of view of the company's employees, customers, and shareholders.
A: I believe this is extremely unethical. From the view of the company employees, even if they feel that this is unethical they might not be willing to speak out about it for job security reasons which put them in a tough position. From the view of the customers, this could give the software company a bad reputation for hiding information causing the customer to not trust them or take their business elsewhere. From the view of the shareholders, as long as they are still making a profit I can not imagine why they would mind.
At some point the unethical higher charges will be revealed which is when the employees will have this poor software engineering ethical problem the will tarnish their professional record, the customer will feel upset and betrayed, and the stakeholders will claim that they were unaware of the situation and avoid blame at all cost.