# S3 E2: Byte: Data Ethics with Gwilym Lockwood

> This is content from just-tim, the data-and-analytics channel by Tim Ngwena (formerly 'Tableau Tim'). Tim has 12+ years of hands-on BI experience and covers Tableau most of all, plus Power BI, Looker, Hex, SQL and data modelling, the analytics industry, and the craft of doing the job — always tool-agnostic and honest about the trade-offs.

- **Author:** Tim Ngwena (just-tim, https://just-tim.com/about)
- **Published:** 2024-04-22
- **Format:** Video · 34 min watch · transcript available
- **Topics:** Analytics, AI & ML, Industry trends
- **Tools:** Alteryx
- **Canonical:** https://just-tim.com/posts/s3-e2-byte-data-ethics-with-gwilym-lockwood
- **Watch:** https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MAtGPyWsnKk

In this Datum episode, Ravi and I are joined by our first guest, Gwilym Lockwood, to explore data ethics. We work through what data ethics actually means, why it matters for everyday analysts and not just algorithm builders, and how to raise it with clients and embed it in your work.

## Key takeaways

- Data ethics applies to ordinary dashboards, not just headline-grabbing algorithms: badly designed metrics (like Amazon warehouse time or cable technician job counts) can ignore real human realities such as toilet breaks and unintentionally amplify bias.
- Identical data can carry very different ethical weight depending on context: Gwilym's data school exercise reuses the same dataset as product launches and then as hospital operations, exposing that there's a technical right answer but no single ethical one.
- AI and automation are only as fair as their training data and underlying logic, so they tend to reproduce existing human prejudice rather than remove it.
- With clients, frame ethics as better metrics and unintended consequences rather than preaching ethics directly; rewarding sales revenue-per-minute beat raw call time and happened to be the more ethical choice too.
- 'Competence ethics' matters: small technical errors like joining on names instead of IDs can drop people from data and cause real harm, so build checkpoints throughout your pipeline.

## Chapters

- 0:01 Introducing our first guest
- 1:08 Security training and a credentials anecdote
- 5:22 What is data ethics?
- 7:50 Mundane dashboards with ethical consequences
- 13:03 The product-versus-patient model exercise
- 17:31 Bias, AI and automation
- 19:30 Raising ethics with clients
- 24:26 What to do next
- 29:05 Competence ethics and technical mistakes
- 32:55 Wrap up

Watch the full video, read the transcript and use chapter deep-links on the page: https://just-tim.com/posts/s3-e2-byte-data-ethics-with-gwilym-lockwood

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just-tim — Data and analytics, with a point of view. · https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC7HYxRWmaNlJux-X7rNLZyw · https://twitter.com/TableauTim · https://www.linkedin.com/in/timngwena