EMPOWERED

CHAPTER 23Ethics

In this chapter, I'd like to discuss one of the most sensitive, yet potentially most important topics—the subject of ethics.

As we've discussed, the four big risks that every product team needs to consider are:

1. Will the customer buy it, or choose to use it? (Value risk)
2. Can the user figure out how to use it? (Usability risk)
3. Can we build it? (Feasibility risk)
4. Can the stakeholders support this solution? (Business viability risk)

Normally, we would consider ethical questions as part of business viability. If a solution is not ethical, it may indeed leave the company in serious trouble.

In practice, however, there are two problems with this:

First, there are already so many different aspects to business viability—sales, marketing, finance, legal, compliance, privacy, and more—that it's easy for ethics to get lost.

Second, unlike the other areas of business viability, there is rarely a stakeholder explicitly responsible for ethics.

The result is that ethics too often does not get the attention it deserves, and we have all seen the damage to the company, to the environment, to our customers, and to society, that can result from ethical lapses.

So, I have been advocating for explicitly considering ethical implications by adding a fifth risk:

5. Should we build it? (Ethical risk)

One progressive tech‐product company that does have a stakeholder specifically responsible for ethics is Airbnb, where my longtime friend Rob Chesnut served until recently as chief ethics ...