Autonomy
Preserve meaningful choice and avoid covert steering or manipulation.
Ethics
Performance cannot be separated from power.
Behavioural Performance can affect how work is allocated, supported, measured and judged. Responsible practice therefore includes the people affected by the system, not only the person designing it.
Working principles
Design support that preserves agency and accountability.
These are the Institute’s current working commitments. They are open to critique and require further expert review as the field develops.
Transparency and consent
Make purpose, material effects and participation conditions understandable where practicable.
Equity
Examine who carries new effort, risk or surveillance burden, including differences hidden by averages.
Privacy
Collect and retain no more personal information than the stated purpose requires.
Contestability
Provide ways for affected people to question, refuse, correct or help revise an intervention.
Unintended effects
Look actively for workarounds, dependency, exclusion, reduced capability and loss of trust.
Questions before intervention
- Is the required outcome itself legitimate, clear and proportionate?
- Which parts of the pathway can adapt without weakening safety, quality or accountability?
- Who decides, who is affected and who can challenge the design?
- What personal data is necessary, and how will consent, retention and deletion work?
- What evidence would show that the intervention helped, failed or caused unintended harm?
- Could support create dependency, exclusion, surveillance or automation bias?
Read the research agenda and BPI responsible-use boundaries for applied examples.