Professional Documents
Culture Documents
2 ^ublic Safety
2 Bribery and Fraud
2 Environmental ^rotection
2 Fairness
2 Honesty in Research and Testing
2 Conflicts of Interest
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2Increased awareness of importance
due to publicity surrounding high
profile engineering failures
2Engineering decisions can impact
public health, safety, business
practices and politics
2Engineers should be aware of moral
implications as they make decisions in
the workplace.
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2 Study of ethics helps engineers develop a
moral autonomy:
2 Ability to think critically and independently
about moral issues
2 Ability to apply this moral thinking to
situations that arise in the course of
professional engineering practice
2 Ethical problems in engineering are often
complex and involve conflicting ethical
principles. Engineers must be able to
intelligently resolve these conflicts and
reach a defensible decision
^ersonal versus
Business/^rofessional Ethics
2 ^ersonal Ethics: Deals with how we treat
others in our day-
day-to-
to-day lives
2 Business/^rofessional Ethics:
2 Involves choices regarding relationships
between organizations and other
organizations, government, and groups
of individuals
2 The complexity of these relationships
often pose dilemmas not encountered in
personal ethics
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2Both engineering and business are
governed by laws
2Legal acts are not necessarily
ethical
2Acts which are ethical are not
necessarily legal
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2 Ethical problems are often open-
open-
ended there is often no unique correct
solution
2 There will typically be a range of
possible solutions to an ethical
problem
2 Deriving a good solution requires
analytical skills that draw from a large
body of knowledge
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2Most engineers work for large
corporations and are not self-
self-
employed
2Engineers are neither as well
compensated for their work nor as
highly regarded as physicians or
lawyers
2Engineering societies are not as
powerful as those established for
physicians or lawyers
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2The formal training period is less
extensive for engineers than for other
professionals
2Many individuals employed as
engineers have not been licensed.
^hysicians and lawyers must be
licensed by the state before they may
practice their profession
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2 Express the rights, duties and obligations of
members of the profession
2 Do not express new ethical principles, but
coherently restate existing standards of
responsible engineering practice
2 Create an environment within the profession
where ethical behavior is the norm
2 Not legally binding ² an engineer cannot be
arrested for violating an ethical code, but
may be expelled from or censured by the
engineering society
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2 Relatively few engineers are members of
engineering societies. Nonmembers don·t
necessarily follow the ethical codes
2 Many engineers either don·t know that
the codes exist, or have not read them
2 The engineering codes often have
internal conflicts, but do not provide
means for their resolution
2 The codes can seem coercive at times
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2 Issues pertaining to the conduct of
business
2 Employee/employer relations
2 Now: emphasize commitments to safety,
public health, and environmental
protection
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2 Depending on your discipline and organizational
affiliations, you may be bound by more than one
ethical code:
2 Disciple related (ASME, IEEE, etc)
2 National Society of ^rofessional Engineers (NS^E)
2 Employee codes (corporation, university, etc)
2 Union codes
2 Familiarity with the codes that apply to you, as
well as a basic knowledge of ethical theory, can
help to resolve conflicts among the different
codes, and can help an engineer to make
coherent ethical choices
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2 Need
2 ^roximity
2 Capability
2 Last resort
2 hen is an engineer morally obligated to
blow the whistle?
2 You blow the whistle if all of the previous
conditions have been met
2 You
blow the whistle when you feel that
there is great imminent danger of harm if the
activity continues unchecked if all of the
previous conditions have been met
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2 Avoid preconceived notions about what the
results of the research will be
2 Be open to changing the hypothesis when
such action is indicated by the experimental
evidence
2 Ensure that an objective frame of mind is
maintained throughout the research process
2 Conclusions should be confirmed by as many
colleagues as possible, and should not be
prematurely announced to the public
2 The ultimate goal of research is not publicity
and fame, but rather the discovery of new
knowledge
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