Final answer:
Free will is engaged in the action step in the ethical decision-making process for computing professionals.
Therefore, the correct answer is: option 'action'.
Step-by-step explanation:
Ethical decision-making deals with preferences, utilities, costs, benefits, goals and objectives. One must take all of these into account in order to define the problem and determined the desired end result.
According to the research article by Edward J. O'Boyle, in the ethical decision-making process for computing professionals, free will is engaged in the action step rather than the human intellect.
This means that when computing professionals make ethical decisions, they exercise their free will to take action based on their own personal values and moral principles. An interactive software program which allows the user to see the ways in which the Code is integrated and instructive in the six-step moral decision-making process is accessible via the internet.
In the research article, the secondary purpose is to reformulate the Code as a set of questions which allow the computing professional to see practices which diminish the human person as unethical and those which enhance the human person as ethical.