Ethical software development remains stubbornly difficult despite two decades of normative frameworks, professional codes, and participatory methodologies. This paper offers a diagnostic rather than prescriptive contribution: it argues that the persistent gap between ethical intention and ethical implementation is a structural epistemic condition, not primarily a failure of will, education, or normative guidance. Three independently sufficient mechanisms interact to produce what I call the ethical knowledge gap -- a condition in which the knowledge required for ethically informed decision-making is systematically unavailable at the point of decision, even when the organization as a whole possesses it. First, drawing on Hayek's (1945) analysis of dispersed knowledge and its organizational extensions, the paper establishes that ethically relevant knowledge in software development is constitutively distributed across roles, largely tacit, and -- unlike efficiency-related knowledge -- unsupported by any spontaneous aggregation mechanism analogous to the price system. Second, an interpretive deficit, analyzed through Weick's sensemaking framework and the literature on framing and epistemic cultures, renders developers unable to recognize the ethical significance of what they know: the sensemaking apparatus of engineering culture makes technical decisions intelligible while systematically obscuring their ethical dimensions. Third, a credibility attenuation, analyzed through the social epistemology of testimony and epistemic dependence, discounts developers' observations as they cross organizational role boundaries, so that hybrid judgments combining technical detail with ethical assessment lose their epistemic force.

翻译：尽管历经二十载的规范框架、职业规范与参与式方法研究，道德软件开发仍顽固地困难重重。本文提供诊断性而非规范性贡献：论证道德意图与道德实施之间持续存在的鸿沟是一种结构性认知条件，主要并非意志、教育或规范指导的缺失。三种相互独立的作用机制相互交织，形成了笔者所称的"伦理知识鸿沟"——即组织虽整体掌握所需知识，但决策节点系统性地缺乏伦理知情决策所需知识的状态。首先，借鉴哈耶克（1945）对分散知识及其组织延伸的分析，本文确立软件开发中的伦理相关知识在构成上分散于不同角色、主要呈隐性特征，且与效率相关知识不同，它缺乏类似价格体系的自发聚合机制支持。其次，通过韦克的意义建构框架及框架化与认知文化相关文献分析的解释性缺陷，导致开发者无法识别自身知识中的伦理意义：工程文化的意义建构机制使技术决策可被理解，却系统性地遮蔽其伦理维度。第三，通过证言社会认识论与知识依赖框架分析的信誉衰减效应，使得开发者观察结论在跨越组织角色边界时被削弱，导致融合技术细节与伦理评估的混合判断丧失其知识效力。