Ethics in Business Intelligence is a topic that is not commonly discussed. It is essential for any business or team implementing an analytical platform to consider how data will be implemented and used. We know BI offers significant benefits – but do we consider certain ethical concerns that deserve attention?
1. Data Privacy and Security: BI collects and analyzes large amounts of data. Sometimes the data is very sensitive and should not be accessible to everyone. Your organization should consider how to handle access control. One approach we suggest is to track the ownership of each piece of data. As data is combined and visualized, every owner with data involved votes in the authorization process. This protects all of the data – even pieces of data that are not directly visible but used in calculated insights. Data anonymization and compliance with privacy regulations (e.g., GDPR) should also be considered when gathering data. You do not want unnecessary penalties to take away from the profitability of your BI platform.
2. Bias and Fairness in Data Analysis: BI generates insights to support decision-making. Be careful to not allow personal biases or business assumptions to unintentionally produce slanted outcomes or reinforce existing inequalities. Data objectivity is essential to maintaining the integrity of your analysis.
3. Transparency and Understandability: BI processes can often be very complex. Ensuring transparency and understandability in these processes becomes crucial. The decisions that are made directly impact the success of the business and the people that are employed by it. The leadership team needs to be able to not only understand the insights presented but also understand how the insights were obtained. Especially in predictive analysis. This will help them make better decisions when choosing which insights to follow. Also, never limit metrics because of a lack of data. It is always better to provide all measurements of a business process even if some of the data is uncategorized.
4. Data Governance: It is important to establish clear guidelines, policies, and accountabilities around data governance so that ethical standards can be maintained. This includes defining roles and responsibilities, ensuring data quality, and establishing processes for addressing data-related issues and concerns.
5. Social Impact: BI can have wide-ranging social impacts beyond the immediate business context. You should consider and discuss the broader implications of insights delivered to stakeholders. In fact, if the insights will directly impact employees, customers, and/or communities, you should perform analysis on this impact and provide the results along with your original findings. This will allow leadership to be fully aware of the entire situation when making decisions.
At ConradBI we believe it is imperative to bring attention to these ethical considerations when implementing a BI program. We strive to help organizations foster responsible and sustainable BI implementations that prioritize data privacy, fairness, transparency, and social impact.
