Professional Ethics & Standards Flashcards

A CAP analyst copies a proprietary optimization algorithm from a former employer into a new employer's codebase. This action primarily violates:

Answer: Respect for intellectual property and confidentiality owed to the former employer

Using a former employer's proprietary algorithm without authorization breaches intellectual property rights and ongoing confidentiality duties.

In a rush to meet a deadline, a teammate suggests reporting the training-set performance of a model as its expected real-world performance. A CAP analyst should object because:

Answer: Reporting training performance as expected performance overstates results and misleads stakeholders

Training-set performance typically overstates generalization, so presenting it as expected performance is a misleading representation of results.

A CAP professional is engaged as an expert reviewer of another firm's analytics work. Which behavior meets ethical standards for such reviews?

Answer: Providing an objective assessment based on evidence, even if it displeases the hiring party

Expert reviews must be objective, evidence-based, and independent of the hiring party's preferred outcome.

A healthcare client asks a CAP analyst to link de-identified patient records with a purchased consumer dataset in a way that could re-identify individuals. The analyst should first:

Answer: Evaluate the re-identification risk and ensure the linkage complies with privacy law, consent terms, and ethical standards before proceeding

Combining datasets can defeat de-identification, so re-identification risk and legal and ethical constraints must be assessed before linkage.

A CAP analyst lists an in-progress master's degree as completed on a proposal to win a contract. This misstatement violates the ethical duty to:

Answer: Represent one's qualifications and credentials truthfully

Misstating credentials is a false representation of qualifications, which professional codes explicitly prohibit.

Midway through an engagement, a CAP analyst concludes the client's business question cannot be answered reliably with the available data. The ethical response is to:

Answer: Inform the client of the data limitations and discuss revised scope, additional data, or honest caveats

Analysts must candidly disclose when data cannot reliably answer the question rather than deliver unfounded conclusions.

Which scenario best illustrates a CAP professional's ethical obligation to society at large, beyond duties to clients and employers?

Answer: Flagging that a proposed pricing model would illegally discriminate against a protected class, even though the client wants it

Duties to society require opposing analytical applications that cause unlawful or unjust harm, even when a client requests them.