In this ProductTank Auckland talk, Tanya Johnson, Chief Product Officer at Auror, advises on how to weave ethics into product management and make sure the products we build have a positive impact on society.

Her key points include:

• Organisational culture is the foundation
• Why diversity is important to product teams
• Include ethics as a prioritisation filter
• Ethical considerations in your product planning
• Consider your stakeholders
• Thinking about your technology choices

Watch the talk in full, or read here for an overview.

Organisational culture is the foundation

Tanya highlights that organisations are built to solve the bigger problems. If we are to build products that help people and avoid doing things that are harmful, the ideology must be built into the core culture of the organisation. By this Tanya means having a set of values and principles that can be referred to on a daily basis. It is crucial to test any product feature against such principles in order to work out if it brings us closer to our product vision. Equally, having these values from the onset provides product managers with an official hook when having conversations with other people in the organisation. Tanya says when building these values and embedding them into the organisation, to remember “whatever product you are in, people are at the end of it”.

Why diversity is important

Tanya says that often we end up with homogenous teams of similar demographics and backgrounds, when in fact we should be utilising diversity and dissent as a tool for good. She points out that when building product features and making ethical decisions about what to build, it is vital there are “different people from different backgrounds with different perspectives and lived experiences” and to encourage them to bring these qualities with them. In turn, this will allow us to “build teams which preempt issues rather than needing to be reactive when things happen”. It is also important to understand which areas of your organisation hold power and to assign such people to those teams.

Ethical considerations in your product planning

Tanya says that for her company, Auror, ethical considerations are included in the prioritisation framework. This takes the form of “doing the right thing”, for example, meeting legal requirements in all countries your product operates in, having robust privacy standards and meeting your organisation’s values. Tanya suggests that when including ethical decisions in your product planning and considering how to do the best thing for your users, to ask three questions:

• Who are you building this for?
• How might they actually use it?
• What’s the worst-case scenario? (run impact assessments habitually)

Consider your stakeholders

Tanya urges us to consider a wider pool of stakeholders as well as widen our definition of those who are impacted. She suggests three important questions to ask ourselves to help with this:

• Whose needs are we considering?
• Who are we prioritising when building?
• Who are we leaving out?

Thinking about your technology choices

Tanya calls attention to the fact technology is not neutral. The data and data models we use are imperfect, so as a result so are the assumptions made when they were built. She says “our assumptions and blindspots propagate societal problems through code” and therefore we must be very careful about how a product is built, as it is equally as important as what you’re building and who for.

Key takeaways

Tanya summarises the key takeaways from her talk on how to weave ethics into product management:

1. Organisational culture is the foundation
2. Build diverse teams, and seek their perspective
3. Include ethics as a prioritisation filter
4. Cover ethical considerations in your product planning and run impact assessments on tech that impacts people
5. Consider a wider pool of stakeholders
6. Technology is not neutral, think not just about what you’re building and for who, but also how

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