The Ethics of Analytics: A New Perspective?

Analysts are responsible for the business questions they ask, the conclusions they derive from the data, and the implementation of those analytic results

“Guns don’t shoot people, people shoot people”. It is a popular saying, and it is a hard one to argue with. A gun, for example, does not have a consciousness and has no free will; therefore, it cannot be held responsible for its actions, because it only does what it is designed to do. At the same time, I find this reasoning too easy. A gun may not be a moral agent, but it certainly has a moral imprint. If a tool is designed to do harm -- or if there are known malfunctions that can cause harm -- the designers and engineers have a certain moral responsibility