Data Ethics Foundations
What the exam tests
Data Ethics Foundations checks whether you can separate 'legal' from 'ethical' and apply structured moral reasoning to data decisions. Questions probe ethical theories, principles, stakeholder analysis, and lifecycle responsibility. A defensible answer names the principle at stake, the affected parties, the foreseeable harm, and a proportionate alternative.
Core rules and concepts
- Ethics asks what should be done; law sets a minimum enforceable standard. Compliance with GDPR or a privacy policy does not settle an ethical question.
- Consequentialist reasoning weighs outcomes and harms; deontological reasoning focuses on duties and rights; virtue ethics asks what a prudent, honest professional would do; justice reasoning examines fair distribution of benefits and burdens.
- Common principles: respect for persons, beneficence, non-maleficence, justice, transparency, accountability, fairness, and privacy. These can conflict, so reasoning must show trade-offs.
- Ethical analysis should map data subjects, collectors, processors, deployers, bystanders, and future users, especially where power is asymmetric.
- Responsibility continues across the lifecycle: design, collection, processing, sharing, retention, and deletion. 'We only collected it' does not erase downstream use.
Worked example
A retailer infers pregnancy from purchase patterns and targets coupons. The practice may be lawful, but the exam wants more. Affected parties include the customer, household members who share an account, and groups subject to stereotyping. Foreseeable harms include disclosure, embarrassment, manipulation, and discrimination. Applying respect for persons, the inference is not transparent and may not be reasonably expected; applying non-maleficence, targeting could cause distress; applying justice, errors fall unevenly on people whose behavior is atypical. A proportionate response is to stop using the inference for sensitive targeting, provide clear notice and opt-out, use aggregate rather than individual profiling, and document the decision.
Traps that cost marks
Treating 'it is legal' as a complete ethical answer. Treating ethics as personal opinion without principles or evidence. Ignoring indirect stakeholders and power asymmetries. Assuming consent resolves every harm. Confusing transparency with understandability. Failing to state a concrete mitigation or decision.