In a recent post from Brandon Savage he looks at something not commonly thought about with the act of developing applications - ethics and how they impact the end user.

Doctors, lawyers and engineers are required by their professions to receive certifications and follow certain ethical guidelines. These rules exist to protect those who rely on their services. [...] Software development is a skill, and an increasingly important one, but one that is not governed by any licensing or ethical rules. It’s a Wild West of ethical and legal conduct.

He suggests that, since the world of programming (and programmers) grows larger and larger every day, there should be some sort of standards put in place to ensure that the developer you just added to your team (or contractor!) will write code that handles user data correctly and provides the security guaranteed to the users of the system.