Summary: Paramedic Ethics For Computer Professionals

I ran into an ethical issue when I worked at a bus manufacturer somewhat similar to what George faced in the “Paramedic Ethics for Computer Professionals” paper. I was the operations supervisor and one of my duties was to execute, monitor and troubleshoot daily, nightly and weekend systems jobs. One of the major jobs was the Material Requirements Planning (MRP) process. The MRP jobs would examine the current and future orders to determine the materials needed for the next three to six months. We ran the job on the weekend and on rare occasions at night during the week. The rare occurrences were generally to take a much further view and see what the requirements would be for the next year to three years based on current and projected orders.
Up to this point the CFO had never been a part of the MRP process request, but my director insisted that the MRP was created and executed as requested. I created, ran the job and supplied the requested data requested by the CFO. About a week later a request to create different versions of the MRP jobs needed to be processed each night for four nights. The request originated from the CFO and the described purpose was for another “presentation”. I asked the MRP forecaster why we needed the MRP runs and if he knew we were completing these tasks for the CFO. The forecaster told me that he was well aware and was directed to make the forecasts based on the CFO’s input. The CFO was working on the data for upcoming corporate internal audit and an IRS audit. The CFO was having us run different scenarios to see which one would have the best forecast and work with the numbers he was