You're sitting with your product team, all set to launch a new feature for your social platform. The metrics look great, a projected 35% growth in engagement and a 20% boost in user retention. Everyone’s excited about the launch.

Then, one of your data scientists raises a concern: "This feature might be a bit addictive. It could push users to engage more than we intended."

What do you do in that moment? Is this a good problem to have or an ethical concern?

This is the reality of product management in 2025. We’re all trying to navigate the complex balance between delivering growth and making ethical decisions, often without clear guidelines or easy answers.

As product managers, we’re familiar with the pressure to hit targets, higher engagement, more active users, and growth metrics that make our bosses happy. But sometimes, those features that look great on paper can have unintended consequences. The metrics look fantastic, but is there a moral cost involved?

For example, let’s take YouTube’s recommendation engine. When it was first rolled out, it led to a dramatic 70% increase in watch time. A clear success, right? But as time passed, it became evident that the algorithm was pushing users into controversial and often harmful content. Former YouTube engineer Guillaume Chaslot admitted, "We optimized for what people would watch, not what would enrich their lives."

It’s a familiar dilemma. According to a survey by ProductPlan, 63% of product managers have shipped features that left them with ethical concerns. But the numbers were so compelling that the decision to move forward seemed justified.

Then there’s the issue of privacy. How many times have we heard companies claim, "Your privacy matters to us," while simultaneously designing systems that track users in ways that are often misleading or intrusive? Think back to the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic when Zoom was found to be sharing user data with Facebook without informing users or when period-tracking apps were selling sensitive data to advertisers. These weren’t accidental oversights. They were product decisions made with real consequences.

Research from the Mozilla Foundation shows that 81% of people say privacy is important to them, but only 12% actually read privacy policies. This presents a significant gap that many companies exploit. By using confusing terms, hidden clauses, or dark patterns, they can manipulate users into giving up more information than they intend to. If your business model relies on users not fully understanding what’s being done with their data, it might be time to reconsider your approach.

Inclusion is another area that often gets overlooked. When Apple Health launched in 2014, it tracked everything from copper intake to selenium levels. But it didn’t track menstrual cycles. That wasn’t an accident. It was a product oversight. This kind of blind spot happens often. From speech recognition systems that struggle with non-American accents to facial recognition algorithms that perform poorly on darker skin tones, these are not just technical issues; they are missed opportunities.

Studies show that companies with diverse product teams experience higher innovation revenue. Teams that look like one another tend to build products that reflect their own experiences and needs, leaving significant gaps for others. As one of my colleagues at Google puts it, "If everyone in your product meeting went to the same three colleges and lives in the same zip code, you’re not building for the world, you’re building for your bubble."

So, how do we address these challenges? There’s no simple or one-size-fits-all solution. Ethics in product management aren’t always clear-cut. But I’ve learned a few key takeaways that can help guide the process:

Focus on building ethics into your development process from the start. Don’t leave tough questions for later when it’s too late to adjust. Add considerations like "Who could be excluded?" or "How might this feature be misused?" to your product specifications. Addressing these issues early encourages the team to think critically about potential consequences.

Then, make sure your team is diverse in every sense, background, experience, and perspective. Diverse teams are better equipped to spot issues that others might miss and can help create more inclusive, thoughtful products.

Finally, sometimes you have to be the voice of reason. When a feature might drive growth but feels ethically questionable, speaking up is important. It’s not always easy, and it might slow things down, but it’s better to have those hard conversations early rather than deal with the consequences later.

As product managers, we are building more than just products. We are shaping the experiences and behaviors of users. The decisions we make today can have long-lasting impacts. No growth metric is worth compromising the integrity of the products we build or the trust of the users who rely on them.