ETHICS AND VALUES

“Technology can have no legitimacy unless it inflicts no harm.”

-Adm.H.G. Rickover

ENGINEERING ETHICS
Engineering ethics is the field of applied ethics and system of
moral principles that apply to the practice of engineering. The field examines and
sets the obligations by engineers to society, to their clients, and to the
profession. As a scholarly discipline, it is closely related to subjects such as
the philosophy of science, the philosophy of engineering, and the ethics of
technology. It is the study of moral issues and decisions confronting individuals
and organizations involved in engineering and the study of related questions
about moral ideals, character, policies and relationships of people and
organizations involved in technological activity.

Engineering is an important and learned profession. Engineers

are expected to exhibit the highest standards of honesty and integrity.
Engineering has a direct and vital impact on the quality of life for all people.
Accordingly, the services provided by engineers require honesty, impartiality,
fairness, and equity, and must be dedicated to the protection of the public health,
safety, and welfare. Engineers must perform under a standard of professional
behaviour that requires adherence to the highest principles of ethical conduct.

Thus ethics is not peripheral to, or an add-on to, engineering. It

is integral to the practice of engineering, part of engineering problem solving.
Safety and guarding against avoidable harm are built into engineering; they are
the principles that underlie engineering codes and standards. 
Engineering ethic can be considered in three frames of reference-
1. Individual

2. Professional

3. Social. 

Engineering ethics can be further divided into “micro ethics” ,

concerned with individuals and the internal relations of the engineering
profession and “macro ethics”, concerned with the collective, social
responsibility of the engineering profession and societal decisions about
technology.

MICRO ETHICS
Micro ethics can be at two levels – Individual and Professional. The
individual ethics include honesty, integrity, fairness etc; whereas professional
ethics at micro level include adherence to safety, quality etc.

PERSONAL ETHICS/INDIVIDUAL EHTICS

It includes personal qualities like decent, honest and truthful life,
technical qualities and responsibility. Other than these personal qualities,
professional specific individual values are -

Technical ethics

 covers the technical decisions and judgments made by engineers

 micro level analysis of individual technologies or practitioners
 examples are – respect of intellectual property rights, computer ethics (not
helping the hackers)

Ethical responsibility

 making wise choices when such choices suddenly, unexpectedly present

themselves
 a willingness to engage others in the crucial choices
 making choices on issues that confront technological society and how
intelligently to confront them
PR0FESSIONAL ETHICS
The moral responsibility of engineers arises from special
knowledge possessed by an individual in the profession.

The Professional ethics

 covers professional relationships between engineers and other individuals

who are their managers, clients, colleagues and employers

 the role of engineers in industry and other organizations, professional

engineering societies, and responsibilities of the profession

 example

 Software Engineering Code of Ethics and Professional Practice as

recommended by the ACM/IEEE-CS says not to knowingly use
software that is obtained or retained either illegally or unethically.

Usually the professional and personal responsibility is represented in a code of

ethics which are covered under professional competencies in that organization.

CODE OF ETHICS
Codes of ethics vary from one professional society to another,
but they typically share common features in prescribing the responsibilities of
engineers to the public, their employers and clients, and their fellow engineers.
All modern codes state that the most significant responsibility of engineers is to
protect the public health, safety and welfare. Codes often also emphasize such
characteristics as competence, trustworthiness, honesty and fairness.

What does the code of ethics say?

 The code Express the rights, duties and obligations of members of the
profession

 They restate existing standards of responsible engineering practice „

  Create an environment within the profession where ethical behaviour is the
norm „

 They are not legally binding – an engineer cannot be arrested for violating
an ethical code, but may be expelled from or censured by the engineering
society

For example,

1. The IEEE Code of Ethics, implemented in 1990, pledges its members “to

accept responsibility in making engineering decisions consistent with the
safety, health and welfare of the public, and to disclose promptly factors
that might endanger the public or the environment.” It also commit its
members “to assist colleagues and co-workers in their professional
development and to support them in following this code of ethics”

The Boston molasses disaster provided a strong impetus for the establishment of

professional licensing and codes of ethics in the United States.
 2. NSPE Code of Ethics (The National Society of Professional Engineers is an
American professional association representing licensed professional
engineers) says

 Hold paramount the safety, health, and welfare of the public.

 Perform services only in areas of their competence.

 Issue public statements only in an objective and truthful manner.

 Act for each employer or client as faithful agents or trustees.

 Avoid deceptive acts.

 Conduct themselves honorably, responsibly, ethically, and lawfully so as to

enhance the honor, reputation, and usefulness of the profession.

THE FUNDAMENTAL VALUES

As most of the codes of ethics say, the values of safety,
health and welfare of the public are paramount to an engineer. These values are
discussed below.

SAFETY
One of the main duties of an engineer is to ensure the safety of
the people who will be affected by the products that he or she designs. The code
of ethics of the professional engineering societies makes it clear that safety is of
paramount importance to the engineer.
The Bhopal disaster, the gas leak incident in India, is considered as the world’s
worst industrial disaster ever known to mankind. It is proven that the
responsibility for safety, risk assessment and ethical codes was an absent
criterion in the UCIL plant.  Important lessons learnt from Bhopal incident would
be that in professional ethics, responsibility for safety and risk assessment are
the most important aspects that should be practiced in every establishment.

What is safety?

Safety means freedom from damage, injury, or risk . Risk is the possibility of
suffering harm or loss.

Responsibility of Engineers

 Safety should be an integral part of any engineering design

 No duty of the engineer is more important than her duty to protect the

safety and well-being of the public 

 Risk is a key element in any engineering design which has to be minimised

to the maximum possible extent

How to ensure safety?

  The engineering design must comply with the applicable laws

 Design must meet the standards of accepted engineering practice

 Any design alternatives that are potentially safer must be explored

 Risk-Benefit analysis should be done to analyze risk and to determine

whether a project should proceed

 The engineer must be aware of potential product misuses by the users

and the design should be to avoid these misuses

 Once the product is designed, both prototypes and devices should be

tested

Different types of accidents or risks are-

1. Procedural Accidents „

 Most common „

 Often caused by bad choice, or failure to follow regulations or

established procedures „

2. Engineered Accidents „

 Caused by flaws in the design of a product or system „

3. Systemic Accidents „

 Harder to understand and control „

 Characteristic of complex technologies and systems „

4. Voluntary risk

 Involvement of people in risky actions knowing that these actions

are unsafe.
Health
Public health is affected by many factors such as pollution,
toxic elements, flawed design etc. So the engineers should

 Follow the quality standards, for example, the level of radiation from a cell
phone device

 Minimize the emissions from industrial process

 Minimize the use of toxic materials for end products

 Adhere to the pollution standards for air, water, noise etc of the country

 Shall be objective and truthful in professional reports, statements, or

testimonies

 Report to authority any potential risks

Public Welfare
If the standards for safety and health are met, it will add to the public welfare.
Apart from those public welfare includes

 Identify, define and address ethical, economic, cultural, legal and

environmental issues related to work projects

 Be objective in issues permits for engineering projects

 Avoid illegal activities like hacking and cyber attacks etc

 Ensure Quality of services and products

 Quality control is a system of maintaining standards in manufactured

products by testing a sample of the output against the specification.

 The quality in public services like Indian Engineering Services is

expressed through the citizen’s charter
What is a citizen’s charter?

 Citizen’s Charter is a document which represents the commitment of the

Organization towards its Citizens in respects of Standard of Services,
Information, Grievance Redress etc.

 It is a tool for facilitating the delivery of services to citizens with specified

standards, quality and time frame etc.

 A good Citizen’s Charter should have the following components :-

 Vision and Mission Statement of the Organisation

 Details of Business transacted by the Organisation

 Details of ‘Citizens’ or ‘Clients’

 Statement of services including standards, quality, time frame etc.

provided to each Citizen/ Client group separately and how/ where to
get the services

 Details of Grievance Redress Mechanism and how to access it

 Expectations from the ‘Citizens’ or ‘Clients’

 Additional commitments such as compensation in the event of

failure of service delivery.

Personal Values
The codes of ethics also mention the personal values that an engineer should
have. They are

 Integrity and honesty

 Impartiality, fairness, and equity

  Impartiality is a principle of justice holding that decisions should be
based on objective criteria, rather than on the basis of bias,
prejudice, or preferring the benefit to one person over another for
improper reasons.

 Fairness is defined as the quality of having an unbiased disposition

 Equity is the quality of being fair and impartial

 Trustworthiness

 Confidentiality – of certain information belonging to their employer or client

 Privacy – important in cyberspace because of the number of personal

records are stored on and transferred among computers, where the
engineers have access and control

 Ethics in Research and Experimentation „ 

 Conduct oneself honorably, responsibly, ethically, and lawfully

The professional qualities that the code of ethics mandates are

 Competence – the ability to do something successfully or efficiently

 Provide service in their areas of competence only, being honest and

forthright about any limitations of their experience and education

 Strive for high quality, acceptable cost and a reasonable schedule

 Accept full responsibility for their own work

 Disclose to appropriate persons or authorities any actual or potential

danger

 Cooperate in efforts to address matters of grave public concern etc

 Shall strive for professional development 

What is competence?
Is the essential knowledge, skills, and abilities without which an individual is not
a qualified practitioner. It is an ability to do something, especially measured
against a standard.

The four professional development core competency areas are:

1. Communication Literacy

2. Personal and Professional Management

3. Critical Thinking and Problem-Solving Skills

4. Technical Literacy

The personal competence includes: Self-Awareness, Emotional

competence, accurate self-assessment, Self-confidence and Self Management.

ETHICAL ISSUES
The common ethical issues or dilemmas faced by engineers „
are, 

 Public Safety „

 The engineer has an obligation to the employer but also to protect

the society. Sometimes he or she may be forced to neglect the safety
checks to meet with the production targets.

 Ex- Galaxy Note 7 launched to be in direct competition with the

phone 7 and Pixel. However, batteries started exploding and devices
caught fire while charging.
 Corruption, Bribery and Fraud – Corruption is dishonest or fraudulent
conduct by those in power

 An engineer may be bribed to give permit to a potentially harmful

project

 Ex – giving permissions for real estate in environmentally sensitive

areas and for constructions not following the design standards
 Environmental Protection 

 Generally the engineering goals and environmental goals are

conflicting

 Engineers today are grappling with the ethical dilemmas posed by

the conflicts between the economic and environmental requirements
of their work

 Ex – Power generation using fossil fuels

 Fairness „

 An engineer’s decisions will have an impact on a variety of different

groups of people.

 As a professional an engineer’s has a duty to treat all of these people

fairly.

 It is sometimes difficult to identify exactly who will be affected by a

particular decision, and what their interests are

 Honesty in Research and Testing „

 Ex- Volkswagen emissions cheating scandal – the company rigged

the air pollution tests

 Conflict of Values and Conflict of Interest

 There exists conflicts between the professional values of

engineering and business values (discussed in the next section)

 Conflict of Interest(CoI) is often a common issues faced by many

people in their profession where one’s professional interests comes
in conflict with personal interests.

 Conflict of Interest will undermine the concept of fairness

 Whistle blowing

 Whistle blowing has drawn so much attention in engineering

 The technical knowledge and organizational positions of engineers

enable them to detect serious moral problems that affect the public
welfare
The Space Shuttle Challenger disaster is used as a case study of whistle blowing
and organizational behavior including groupthink

 Sometimes they cannot bring appropriate attention to serious

problems they detect unless they can convince others to react

 Whistle blowing so naturally comes up as an option for engineers

 But it is recommend as a last resort

 So the skills of persuading, negotiating, and allying with colleagues

that support other options is important

CONFLICT OF VALUES
As a result of the concurrent development of engineering as a
profession and technology-driven corporations, there exists conflicts between
the professional values of engineering and business values of corporations.

 The professionals value autonomy, collegial control, and social

responsibility, while businesses emphasize loyalty, conformity, and the
overarching goal of improving the bottom line.
  This tension is exacerbated when the career paths of engineers lead to
management positions.

 In the past conflict between self-interest and public interest was seldom a
problem for engineers, since engineering works were almost synonymous
with human progress.

 Today environmental issues have created a divergence between self-

interest, employer interest, professional interest and public interest.

 Thus engineers today are grappling with the ethical dilemmas posed by
everyday conflicts between the economic and environmental requirements
of their work.

MACRO ETHICS
Macro ethics looks at bigger picture issues such as
sustainability, poverty, social justice, and bioethics which need to be addressed
by the engineering profession (and society) as a whole. Macro ethics is also
generally not captured by professional codes of conduct. Macro ethics covers
certain professional and social ethics as follows:

Professional Ethics

 Is concerned with the collective, social responsibility of the engineering

profession

 Collective action can even transcend international boundaries.

 Macro ethical issues affect all members of the profession

 Ex- Ethical implications such as risk and product liability

Social ethics

 Concerns with technology policy decisions at the societal level

 Involves macro level analysis of technology as a whole

 Examples
  Ethical implications of public policy issues, sustainable
development, healthcare, and information and communication
technology

 Ethical issues generated by new developments such as nano

science and nanotechnology 

 Ethical issues associated with robotics and autonomous systems

 Cyber weapons

ROLE OF PROFESSIONAL BODIES

The role of professional engineering societies has been limited
largely to developing codes of ethics. Professional societies, however, could
potentially serve as a conduit to bring together the entire continuum of ethical
frameworks by linking individual and professional ethics and linking professional
and social ethics. In the domain of macroethics, professional societies can
provide a link between the social responsibilities of the profession and societal
decisions about technology by issuing position statements on public policy
issues, such as sustainable development

For example, the engineering community reacted to Agenda 21 by establishing

the World Engineering Partnership for Sustainable Development (WEPSD) in
1992. Recently, some engineering societies have included the social objective in
the role of engineering in the realization of sustainable development.

The leaders of professional societies can be agents of change in the engineering

culture.
THE IMPORTANCE OF ETHICS IN THE
ENGINEERING SECTOR

The social aspect of multifaceted engineering sector forms

one of the most intricate and complex continua of the profession. In fact, the
biggest reason why engineering and the professionals involved are highly
regarded, and respected, by the society may be because the decisions taken by
engineers tend to have huge impacts, sometimes to an extent that the fate of a
place, or many people is changed at a time. Social aspect of engineering is
important to highlight because people, and society as a whole, often expect great
things from engineers, owing to great ‘power’ they possess to bring change. But,
with this great power comes greater responsibility. Very often, the cause and
effect between behavior and consequences are paradoxical; sometimes the
impacts, both positive and adverse, are apparent and conspicuous, yet
sometimes they are fraught with so much uncertainty that the impacts are
pernicious. In this direction, the concept of ethics in engineering becomes
crucial.

Ethics in engineering is a study of characteristics of morals

and conduct of engineers as professionals and individuals as human beings. The
moral and practical significance of ethics vis-à-vis engineering can be related
with the quality of the decisions: with justice, with equity, with the consequences
for all affected by the decision, and with the personal and collective
responsibilities which lie beyond the contractual obligations into which engineers
are often bound.

Engineering, like ethical problems, rarely have a single

readily deduced solution. Both of these contain a range of solutions that are
clearly right, relatively better or not appropriate at all. Prompt and correct
distinction and selection of the available options is critical in engineering. For
example, a product designed or a service rendered may benefit a party but at the
expense of ecological balance of a place, or its social harmony. Ethics, in this
case, probably dictates the use and strong enforcement of risk-benefit analysis
option. Similarly, in cases where an engineer faces strong moral dilemma, or
even ethical or legal conflicts, engineering ethics seeks to go beyond the dictates
of the law when there is no legal guideline for how to solve the conflict.
Therefore, ethics empowers engineers and fosters in them the value of
conscientious moral commitment.
 Ethics also guides the professional conduct of engineers. In
essence, ethical values ensure honest and open transactions in the profession,
and that the professionals are able to work without external pressure or
biasedness. Ethics also ensures that engineers are held accountable for their
actions, so they recognize and accept the personal commitment towards the
client and the job, and maintain discretion over the client information.

The role of ethics, therefore, in engineering is imperative

because the integrity of the profession depends on it. The idea of not
incorporating ethics into engineering is too big a risk. Only ethical engineering
practices can actualize the true essence of engineering-transforming lives of
people for the greater good that have been enduring unjust hardship and difficult
living conditions.