Ethics are very important because the products we create have such powerful consequences. It's common to see engineers so excited about the product they've created (myself included) that they overlook the additional problems they've created. Recent examples are with AI models built with historical data (hiring, loans, or other competitive decisions) that discriminates against groups of people. An ethical approach would be to include these considerations in the data analysis phase. It's not that most developers allow this to happen intentionally and having an ethical mindset is one of the things we can do to avoid problems.