**1. Introduction**

Ethics in the digital age is fundamental for any professional working with information technologies and is considered a philosophical discipline that emphasises ideal human behaviour, especially in the use of IT tools that can cause a social impact on issues such as patents, copyright, cyber warfare, privacy, intellectual property, freedom of expression, and security. Professionals need to consider not only the technical aspects but also the ethical and moral aspects of their work [1].

Ethics in the field of technology was an event in the early of the 1970s and was an event that had repercussions in the health and technology sectors, due to the implications of invasion of privacy that revealed controversial situations [2, 3], mainly in the United States. As a result, unexpected effects were generated that contributed to the intervention of many professionals who proposed codes of ethics in which rationality and ethical values are adopted with responsibility [4–7].

In this way, the advances in Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) have demonstrated their vertiginous growth, whose management of digital information provides and allows the management of a large amount of data where the legal and moral aspects are confronted [8, 9], generating a debate on the regulation of aspects of interest between the parties involved; it is necessary to protect the privacy of users, guarantee the security of information, be transparent in their practises, and take responsibility for their actions.

The aim of this research was to qualitatively analyse the integration of the collected studies on the development of ethics in the technological field, as well as the implications provided in these researches, where ethics applied to the field of technology and communication needs a rigorous and systematic management with clear boundaries between work, learning, and leisure [2], with an emphasis on justice, humility, and professional secrecy.

The problem arises from the fact that the principles of human behaviour, namely honesty, truth-seeking, community welfare, and the environment, are assumed to be the expectations of values that are expected to be found in individuals [3]. IT professionals often have a responsibility to ensure that their practises are ethical and transparent. However, in some cases, it can be difficult to determine who is responsible and how ethical practises should be communicated to users, leading to the research question. What problems arise when ICT ethics are not applied in a professional context?

The approach of this research was qualitative, and the design was non-experimental, as no variables were manipulated. The entire study was based on the SLR (Systematic Literature Review), which was the study tool and was based on Barbara Kitchenham's methodology, applying Cochrane's PRISMA model [10–12]. As part of the protocol used for this systematic literature review, articles were retrieved from databases such as Scielo, Dialnet, Redalyc, Lilacs, and Researchgate, and search engines such as Google Scholar and Redib. Descriptors, such as "ethics in technologies and communication" and "ethics in digital environments," from English and Spanish sources were used to search for articles.

In addition, the research was descriptive because it explained the reasons for the object of study and cross-sectional because articles from different time periods were analysed for the prevalence of the variable "ethics." It is situated in the field of technology, which is in line with the qualitative approach, with secondary sources of information gathering and providing a summary of a specific topic that answers the research question [11].

The use of SL made it possible to synthesise articles by other authors (primary studies), where the evidence of contributions with similar characteristics was analysed and compared in a short time, guaranteeing validity and veracity. In addition to having methodological quality and reproducibility of results, this type of review must be objective, rigorous, and meticulous [11, 12]. The population we worked with was based on selected articles that met the inclusion and exclusion criteria explained in the design phase, as shown in **Figure 1**.
