Build Diverse Teams

Research shows that diverse teams (across the spectrum of experience, race, gender, and ability) are more creative, diligent, and hardworking. An organization that includes more women at all levels, especially top management, typically has higher profits. To learn more, check out the Resources section at the end of this unit.

Everything we create represents our values, experiences, and biases. For example, facial recognition systems often have more difficulty identifying black or brown faces than white faces. If the teams creating such technology had been more diverse, they would have been more likely to have recognized and addressed this bias.

Development teams should strive toward diversity in every area, from age and race to culture, education, and ability. Lack of diversity can create an echo chamber that results in biased products and feature gaps. If you are unable to hire diverse team members, consider seeking feedback from underrepresented groups across your company and user base.

A sense of community is also part of the ethical groundwork at a company. No one person should be solely responsible for acting ethically or promoting ethics. Instead, the company as a whole should be mindful and conscious of ethics. Employees should feel comfortable challenging the status quo and speaking up, which can identify risks for your business. Team members should ask ethical questions specific to their domains, such as:

• Product managers: What is the business impact of a false positive or false negative in our algorithm?
• Researchers: Who is impacted by our system and how? How can it be abused? How can people try to break the product or use it in unintended ways? What is the social context in which this is used?
• Designers: What defaults or assumptions am I building into the product? Am I designing this for transparency and equality?
• Data scientists: What are the implications for users when I optimize my model this way?
• Content writers: Can I explain why the system made a prediction, recommendation, or decision in terms the user can understand?
• Engineers: What notifications, processes, checks, or failsafes can we build into the system to mitigate harm?

Notice that these questions involve the perspectives of multiple roles. Involving stakeholders and team members at every stage of the product development lifecycle helps correct the impact of systemic social inequalities in your system. If you find yourself on a team that’s missing any of these roles, or where you play multiple roles, you may need to wear multiple hats to ensure each of these perspectives is included—and that may involve seeking out external expertise or advice. When employees are dissatisfied with the answers they receive, there should be a clear process for resolving the problem areas, like a review board. We go into more detail on that later.