The Ethical Engineer

1. The Nature of Engineering Ethics

1 The Nature ofEngineering Ethics What This Book Is About This book is a practical guide to ethical decision making for practicing engineers and others in technologically oriented business and industry. It will help you to make ethical decisions yourself and to understand the reasons behind company policies, legal rules, and professional codes. It is also meant to change the way you think and feel about engineering, so that you can be a better and happier engineer. And it just may cause you to take a new look at the ethical dimensions of life generally. Unlike many ethics books, this one is geared to finding answers. I have attempted to present clearly and economically some factors you may use in making decisions. To make it easy to use this book as a reference or study guide, I have listed key points in Appendix 2. Of course, there is no such thing as an ethics rule book. Rather, what you need is an ethics construction kit that provides you with tools and materials to construct your own solutions to problems you may face. This book imparts some specific recommendations , many examples of ethical decisions, several techCopyrighted Material 3 4 CHAPTER ONE niques for ethical decision making, and a variety of rules, principles, and values upon which you can draw. It explains the reasons behind many of the rules and principles and gives you guidance in weighing them. I have tried to capture and summarize the best in the literature of engineering ethics and also to add a good deal that is new. Some of my recommendations are quite specific, others fairly general. Some of the material will raise new ideas, while some details represent a clear and thorough summary of "common sense." Some of my recommendations are controversial, others are widely agreed upon. Together, these materials present a comprehensive picture of and guide to engineering ethics. Why Ethics for Engineers? Practicing engineers often think that ethical problems are not really their concern. Many ethical decisions are not made by any individual. After all, legal and company rules determine much of what an engineer mayor may not do, and committees or executives far removed from the average engineer decide many of the ethical questions that do arise. Of what use, then, is a book or program or course on engineering ethics? Books such as this one are essential because, for several reasons, engineers must have a clear grasp of engineering ethics. First, many of the ethical decisions that individual engineers must make are not settled by rules. After all, rules do not encompass every situation: often the rules only set limits within which decisions must be made, and some Copyrighted Material The Nature ofEngineering Ethics 5 situations are not covered at all. I In addition, rules require interpretation. In some cases it may be easy to see which interpretation of a rule is best, but in others it is not so easy. No set of rules or policies can anticipate every ethical problem that may arise, and even the sincerest engineers may need help in understanding the ethical aspects of some situations. So only ethically aware engineers can correctly apply ethical rules to complex situations, keeping to the spirit as well as the letter of ethical rules. Second, organizations function best when the values implicit in rules and executive decisions are widely understood and discussed within the organization. The best employment situation, both for the employer and for the employees, is a community atmosphere where everyone works together for a common goal in which everyone believes. Companies and firms flourish when their people have common values, a situation impossible to achieve if the rules are bureaucratic mandates handed down from above rather than ways of working toward commonly understood goals. Furthermore, without communication between all levels of an organization, ethical problems may slip between the cracks. Such synergistic effects arise when employees are insensitive to complex ethical dimensions of company operations. It becomes more difficult to overlook ethical problems when each engineer is aware of and sensitive to ethical concerns and potential problems. In general, large decisions are often the resultant of many small decisions made at different levels. Thus, the large decisions reflect the values and ethical aims of the company only when those making the small decisions understand those values and aims and also understand how their Copyrighted Material 6 CHAPTER ONE decisions fit in with the ethical...