Welcome, fellow hackers! You may have noticed a new question on this year’s hackathon submission: “Ethical inquiry: who, what purpose, to what end, and for whom might it fail?” If you’re not familiar with the concept of ethical inquiry, you’re in the right place. Let’s explore how this important perspective can shape your hackathon project and help you create more thoughtful solutions.
What Is Ethical Inquiry?
In the context of the SAS Hackathon, ethical inquiry means intentionally considering the ethical dimensions of your project. Every project—no matter the topic—comes with its own set of assumptions and implications – including ethical impacts you may be inadvertently building into your solution. This year, we encourage you to reflect on those implications as part of your creative process.
The Three Core Questions of Ethical Inquiry
- For what purpose?
- To what end?
- For whom might this fail?
Let’s unpack each question using an example of a butterfly.
For What Purpose?
Imagine your hackathon team is using a complex framework to analyze how monarch butterfly migration patterns affect the peach industry in South Carolina and Georgia. You’ve decided to leverage maps of migration patterns for monarch butterflies, data from farmer yield as well as satellite images of farms across various stages of the year.
Your project’s purpose could be to help farmers maximize their crop yields, or it might be to protect the butterflies from harmful chemicals. Both are worthwhile goals, but your chosen purpose will guide your priorities and decision-making throughout the project. The purpose also communicates an ethical framework you are taking with the project – within your project, are you more focused on the butterfly or the farmers?
For example, if your purpose is to help farmers, you’ll focus on their needs. If your purpose is to protect butterflies, you’ll prioritize their wellbeing. If you discover that a fertilizer used by farmers is harmful to butterflies, your project’s purpose will help determine your next steps—especially if your work moves toward real-world implementation.
To What End?
This question challenges you to consider the boundaries and ethical trade-offs of your project. If you decide you don’t want to harm butterflies just to increase peach yields, you’re already thinking about the limits of your project from an ethical standpoint. Perhaps, as you analyze the images from various farmers and yields, you recognize that the data was not properly anonymized, and you can identify specific farmers – including the faces of their families. A value for privacy will drive you then to pause the project and mitigate the privacy concerns by obfuscating the faces and further anonymizing the data. Perhaps, you will also notify the source of the data about the concern.
“To what end?” asks you to reflect on where you draw the line and what you’re willing—or not willing—to compromise.
For Whom Might This Fail?
No project benefits everyone equally. For instance, monarch butterflies are unlikely to enter closed greenhouses, so peach farmers farming in closed controlled environments won’t be included in your analysis. As a result, those farmers may not benefit from your findings. Similarly, as you analyze the data you may find that some smaller farmers do not use commercial ways of treating their peaches, meaning the assumptions made about the methods of fertilizing the plants will also not apply to them. Or farmers on the boarder of Georgia and Florida are not included in the data set. Finally, your findings on the relationship between monarch butterflies and peach farmers may not apply to the American Lady butterfly species. In fact, the outcomes may be the exact opposite. Considering “for whom might this fail?” helps you recognize who may be left out or negatively affected by your solution.
Beyond this example
While the example above uses butterflies and farmers, ethical inquiry is critical across all industries—whether it’s healthcare, finance, or public safety. By intentionally reflecting on ethics, you help ensure your project is thoughtfully designed and responsibly implemented. It will also in many cases lead to stronger project from a data science perspective as well as a more robust understanding of the business case.
We encourage you to use these questions as a tool for deeper thinking and better outcomes in your hackathon journey. Good luck, and happy hacking!
