Ethical Dilemmas in Early Career: Reflections on a GIS Internship Experience and its Echo in Geospatial Teaching

Abstract

During an internship in an Irish local authority council, I was asked to complete an ethically questionable task. I completed the task without conscious consideration of its impacts. Although I gained valuable skills from the process, I failed to critically engage with the task and reflect on whether or not it should have been done, as well as my role in its completion. Based on my internship, other personal experiences, and conversations with colleagues, I now create space in my geospatial courses for practical conversation about ethics and argue the importance of critically considering and then reflecting on tasks. These conversations sit beside discussion of broader ethical issues, such as data availability and sovereignty.

I advocate here for the importance of practical ethics in geospatial education—a focus on the small and the individual, as well as the wider ethical issues facing cartography and the broader geospatial industry. For professionals in the industry, I also believe it’s essential to create space for open discussion and reflecting on our specific experiences can be beneficial in thinking about the broader role we play in the spatial profession.