One of the most interesting trends from the past year is the emergence of the Chief Data Ethics Officer (CDEO) position. The growing ranks of CDEOs has coincided with an increasingly complicated data environment. If your company manages data and is committed to data privacy and protection, and, even better, to the larger principle of data ethics, appointing a CDEO is a way to put real teeth to that commitment. I joined Acoustic in July of 2020 as General Counsel as well as CDEO.

The CDEO’s role is to ensure the integrity of a company’s data practices, beyond simple privacy compliance. It represents an expansive view of data privacy – data ethics, governance, protection, and privacy – and demonstrates a human-centered approach to data.

Data privacy has been a business focus for the past decade, but it took time for a strategic advisory role within the enterprise—one that ensures data ethics practices are adhered to—to become an imperative. That’s where the CDEO comes in. Some companies have already adopted a version of the role, while others are still exploring it. Any company dealing with data is thinking about this, especially with the continued impact of the CCPA/CPRA and GDPR and the potential for a more comprehensive U.S. framework in the coming year.

The CDEO’s job is to drive trust across all stakeholders – customers, partners, employees, and regulators. An ethical data use framework throughout the data lifecycle, from product design to collection and use, to destruction and disposal, ensures data utilization is not only legal but also deliberate and fair.

Businesses need to evaluate and regularly revisit their data and the way they use it. By creating and investing in a strong data ethics program that encompasses the entire data lifecycle, including around AI, data analytics, and privacy, CDEOs and their companies will set an example for how to effectively drive stakeholder trust, increase business value and effectively manage data risks.

One of the first major initiatives I undertook as Acoustic’s CDEO was the development of a set of Data Ethics Principles, including the following mission and purpose for our data ethics program:

Mission: Ensure the integrity of our data practices and be a thought leader for our customers

Purpose: At its core, data ethics means ensuring the use of data is not just legal but also ethical and fair. It is a more expansive view of data privacy and protection—not just the privacy compliance and the technical infrastructure for data protection, but also the governance, the trends, and ethical questions that evolve as technology and norms change and evolve. It means having an ethical data use framework throughout the data lifecycle phases, including how we collect, store, use, share, and delete data, as well as the accuracy and quality of that data. The overarching principle is trust: we are entrusted with data and we need to treat the data in a way that continues to engender trust.

These principles both reflect our practices and have some level of aspiration, since I believe that having goals is one of the best ways to achieve them. The Principles also serve as a great foundation for our thought leadership with our customers, many of whom are CMOs with responsibility for customer data and analytics. We strive to help our customers be good stewards of the data they hold, when using our products, to be sure, but also beyond that. We succeed when our customers succeed. And one path to success in this fraught big data environment, where trust is the most valuable currency, is through a concrete commitment to data ethics.