The Ethical Engineer

2. Ethical Decision Making

2 Ethical Decision Making So far, we have considered why ethics is important for engineers and discussed how to resolve one particular case. It is time to talk more generally about how to make ethical decisions. The Nature of Ethical Decision Making Case 1 from the previous chapter reveals much about the nature of engineering ethics. Ethics is about how to live, about what makes for a good person and for a good life. Ethical thinking is deciding what really matters in life. So every choice you make is an ethical decision. For example, if you choose not to take a promotion in a distant city in order to remain close to your aging parents, you are deciding that some values, such as family ties or helping those you love, are more important than others, such as career satisfaction or the pleasure of the sauna you would be able to purchase if you took the promotion. This decision reflects what matters in life-what is really good and worthwhile-and that is what ethics is about. Copyrighted Material 23 24 CHAPTER TWO Because values cannot be precisely measured like steel rods, ethical decisions always involve a lot of individual judgment. Ethical decisions are not algorithmic.! Nevertheless , ethical choices are not arbitrary: dedding what is right is not like choosing between hot fudge and strawberry topping. Making an ethical judgment is more like buying a car. There is no simple answer, usually, to the question of which is the best car for you. But there are good decisions and bad ones, and good decisions result from carefully and reasonably weighing the relevant factors. Safety, cost (both initial and upkeep), cargo capacity, aesthetics, and reliability are all considerations. There is no mathematical formula for weighing safety against reliability, and individuals' needs vary. For example, while it is generally cost-efficient to spend somewhat more for a car that will last a lot longer, it may make more sense to buy the low-cost, short-lived car if you expect your income to rise dramatically in the next few years (since, by the time you are ready to scrap the car, you can better afford a new one). Reliability may be less important if you live on a bus route to work, and cargo capacity is more important for some people than for others. So while you can give advice to a friend that will help her make a wise choice, there is no simple rule book you can give her that will make the right choice for her. There is probably no single' 'right" decision for her. Nonetheless, suppose she has a large family and a job for which being a few hours late might cost thousands of dollars. If she buys (as the family's only car) an unsafe, expensive, unreliable two-seater car because it "looks good," she is clearly making a bad decision. Ethical decision making is also much like legal reasonCopyrighted Material Ethical Decision Making 25 ing. A judge who must decide a difficult question of law draws on a variety of sources, such as statutes, precedents, and legal maxims, using the tools of legal reasoning. If she is a good judge, her decision, based on the tools and sources, will be reasonable and defensible, though there is still room for legitimate disagreement. (Supreme Court justices do not always agree about what is constitutional, and even the best judges' decisions are sometimes overturned on appeal.) The good judge can give strong reasons for thinking that precedent N is more central to the case before her than is statute M. Even though her reasons may not convince everyone, any good judge can see the force of her reasons. The same is true of ethics. No simple rules will cover all cases. Just like the judge, the ethical person has to use her judgment. Of course, to be told "you must use your judgment" does not help much when you are not clear on what is to be judged, what factors must be weighed, and how to go about weighing those factors. Fortunately, the ethical person can draw on a variety of sources, such as specific rules, general principles, guiding ideas, values, and moral factors. The ethical person, when facing a difficult moral choice, must reason about which rules, values, principles, and so forth are relevant, analyze the problem in terms of those values and principles, and weigh...