When it comes to ethics in technical writing, a question can arise as to how much a writing profession focused on providing information and simplification can lead to possible breaches of ethics. This is a rightful question to be had, especially for future technical writers studying the discipline and yet to enter the field.
Members of the technical writing community such as Brenda R. Sims (1993) argue that it is vital for students to understand as writers that they are the ones who control how readers and audiences perceive the message and content they provide. This in turn can have effects on values and judgments formed by these readers thanks to the writer's ability to control their interpretation of the information provided. That is why as a writer, it is their ethical responsibility to bear regarding the manner of writing they do that affects said interpretation and future judgments. To know how to remain ethical, writers must know what to avoid common unethical practices in the field. Sims provides a list for their students of things to watch out for. Such things include:
False impressions: Through the usage of inaccurate models or examples, audiences are given false impressions of the features of a product's capabilities.
Imprecise Language: By not being exact with certain words, certain nuances can be missed by readers, leading to confusion. Sims here uses an example of a vacuum that can clean spills (however, is not mentioned it can only clean dry ones and not wet ones).
Missing information: By the lack of information, users can be misled and or be out of the loop.
False/Inaccurate Information: The use of providing inaccurate data information (such as exaggerating numbers or diminishing others) to make what is presented more appealing.
Deemphasizing/Suppressing Important Information: This involves not giving the proper emphasis to important information, such as warning labels, by hiding it in walls of text or through other methods.
Emphasis Misleading Information: This includes placing an emphasis on information that is not reflective of the content to mislead audiences.
“No-Fault” Writing: The use of avoiding placing any responsibility on any entity, including the writer and/or (more commonly) the company, particularly in times of controversy.
With the detailed list above taken into account, we can see how technical writers can lie and mislead people they are hired to inform on topics, people who expect them to remain objective and ethical, not just in written form but in graphics as well. Sam Dragga and Dan Voss (2001) talk about this in their article, going against the lack of humanity and proper respect found in statistical information. Often we may see statistics such as death tolls in graphs and don’t have the full weight of the human suffering and carnage that those numbers may signify. This dehumanizes these victims, making them simply numbers to us rather than fellow human beings with their own whole separate lives. However, in instances like war and medical statistics, we can’t just show graphic photos of what is being directly talked about, as that may be too disturbing for audiences. With this in mind, Dragga and Voss recommend a combination of text and graphics through the use of graphics and photos that help bring symbolism of possible graphical topics, such as medical documents, instead of gruesome medical photos or using graphics to show soldiers when displaying war casualties to remind people viewing them that these numbers were real people. Bringing the right emphasis on the gravity of these issues, rather than just displaying numbers, helps keep things ethical and prevents graphics from becoming unethical by deemphasizing the wrong kind of information, as outlined by Sims in his examples of unethical technical writing practices in the bulleted list above. By being aware of such practices and properly showing the gravity of statistics, we can keep viewers from dehumanizing deaths and devaluing others' sufferings.
Unfortunately, for a technical writer to remain ethical, they can’t simply focus on the words and graphics they are using, nor the formatting they use on their page. Unethicality can arise from a lack of proper localization on the translation of information. This is brought up by Abbie Zahler and his calibrators (2017) when bringing up translation documents for different clients. Simply translating a document to a language like Spanish does not account for the cultural and legal issues that may be found in the locale the document will be used in. You need to have expert knowledge of the language and culture or have someone who is part of the target audience working with said document, or at the very least have continuous avenues of feedback with your target audience especially when dealing with topics such as health insurance documents as to not accidentally deny patients the vital information they require. On top of this, you must also take into consideration the living conditions of your target audience as well.
Some people may not have access to the internet, and may not have knowledge of important resources available to them such as health insurance rules and regulations as pointed out by Zahler. By not taking the living situations of your audience into account you can be excluding certain communities of already disadvantaged people, bringing the question of ethics and morality in your document as it might pander to more majority and rich communities leaving those with already low resources and help, with even less. And unfortunately, issues such as these are not as focused on as they used to be, according to Steve Holmes and his collaborators (2022).
There used to be more conversations to be had about ethics in technical writing before larger movements of modern justice arose, according to Holmes, in which technical writing communities moved away from talks of ethics and categorizing modern issues found in the LGBTQ+ community and certain racial issues to more contemporary mainstream culture. However, Holmes argues that social justice issues go very much in hand with ethics. He argues that social justice movements are in themselves ethically motivated, though not all ethical issues have to be social justice issues (for example the false advertisement of microwave’s heating properties would not be a social justice issue but an ethical one, whilst a document promoting homophobia can be both a social justice and ethical issue). Though it is always important to be doing one's due diligence to have their document fall in line with ethical and social issues, Holmes points out the difficulty is to remain ethical within all aspects of all cultures, races, and issues. In trying to remain ethical, researchers and writers may cause more damage than good as seen when Itchyaqiyaq and Matheson brought attention to the use of “decolonial” in a TPC scholarship, which could have the effects of leading the term to be superficial to certain audiences by the usage of these mostly white ethically motivated community that sought to acknowledge and embrace decolonial themes for proper ethics and education. Not only that but Holmes also mentions the word “decolonial” can look different depending on the positionality and audience. Different races and communities may have different histories and viewpoints on the word. This cluster of different perspectives can complicate things for writers in the effort to remain ethical and reach out to as many communities as possible leading back to the possible actions one can take as mentioned in Zahter's work of having to remain in close connection with your target community to get accurate and applicable feedback as well as having those who are well versed in said communities to work on the documents and media providing information to the related communities lest the concerns voiced by Sims occur of writers unconsciously forcing unwanted perspectives, interpretations, and judgments to their audiences by not know their cultures and backgrounds and just focusing on more surface level things like language translating.
And though it is always important to do the moral and correct things and avoid the list of things that Sims points out as immoral technical writing practices, it is also important to take note that a lot of these arguments of ethics come from an academic standpoint which can conflict with ethics found in a business level, as brought up by Gregory Clark (1987). There is this divide originates from academics believing that it is a writer's obligation and right to all people in a communication setting, even at the expense of others to be objective and fully truthful. This in turn conflicts with professional ethics, as those who hope to keep a job in their company must find a way to remain within their company’s code of ethics whilst finding ways to keep their company's ethos, even at the expense of using questionable wording and formatting. Though no morals are technically broken, objectiveness is compromised to make the writer’s writing positively portray their work lest they make their project look like a joke to their superiors and have the company look poor performing
Even Cezar M. Ornatowki (2009) brings up this issue of writing ethically in a job setting, stating how a technical writer in a company is tasked to write for the company’s best interests. Referencing words from members of the technical wiring community, Pualy, and Riodarns, Ornatowki talks about their definition given by them on technical writing as a career which is to create documents that enable businesses and corporations to achieve their goals and help them maintain their operations. That goal of having to work to meet their company goals and operations is what concerns Ornatowki though. A technical writer has to tread a fine line between remaining objective and moral whilst making products that best benefit the company's goals and operation, which can sometimes conflict. Here we see a conflict of ideologies within the technical writing community. Authors such as Sims, Voss, Zahler, and Holmes argue for the advocacy of proper representation of audiences whilst remaining as committed to the truth as possible, whilst Clark and Omatowsk bring to light that though it is ideal to be as objective and honest as possible, writers are not hired by companies to be trailblazers of righteousness, and are instead hired to improve company operations and goals. This conflict is the crux of ethical issues found in technical writing.
There is no clean-cut way to solve this issue, and one needs only to look around them to see. From the controversy of the Challenger through the lack of proper communication to meet deadlines for launch for results or the use of misleading statistics given by major phone companies deceiving customers about their new phones leading to lawsuits. The best we can do as audiences and also technical writers as mentioned by Sims is to have an awareness of the ethical implications done by the choices of technical writers. By becoming more knowledgeable, we may better navigate these nuanced situations when they arise, and students transitioning to professionals can best navigate that line of ethics and follow the proper protocol of the corporate world that members of the community like Sherry Southard in Omastowski's article describe corporate technical writing.