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I see three things that Thomas should do in the situation of which he speaks.
1. You suggest that this is not a good idea, talk about the reasons why, and present a memo which lists all of the problems that might arise, legal to practical.
2. You document what you are asked to do and when, who asks you to do it, and your advice to the contrary.
3. You do what you are told as best you can, and you document the process and all of the problems you have along the way and perhaps keep a second copy of the document with all of the inaccurate information in red conditional text.
You hold your breath and hope for the best, but if it all goes wrong, you'll have something to back up why you wrote fiction instead of technical docs.
Leonard Porrello
Engineering Scribe
Election Systems and Software
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From: t_hudson
Sent: Tuesday, January 05, 1999 10:56 AM
To: TECHWR-L; LCPORREL
Subject: Ethical Question
What do you do when asked to write about how a system WILL EVENTUALLY behave while ignoring what is actually does. Remember, the person asking you (an engineer or manager) has their job, and possibly an entire teams or groups, on the line.
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Thomas Hudson
