Class discussion notes – What is engineering ethics?

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Engineers don’t have a voice. They’re not necessarily the ones who take the decisions. (Neha)

  • Is there such a thing as ethical unions?
  • Department of Ethics
  • Ethics hot lines
  • Engineering societies
  • What should engineers be thinking about vs. managers and business etc?

Once a project is completed, what is the next role of the engineers? Does the company communicate to everyone else? (Andrea)

Engineering ethics vs. management ethics – shouldn’t they be the same?

“I don’t think that your profession defines what is morally ok.” (Cameron)

  • your profession defines what you’re responsible for
  • you have to communicate potential risks up the chain
  • it defines who you’r beholding to – stock-holders and profit margins vs…
  • engineers should not work outside of their area of expertise

Cultural relativism

  • “ethics is very different from social norms and from law”
  • “ethics depends on the level of maturity”
  • as time progresses we learn more about “universal ethics code” (eg: slavery)

One thought on “Class discussion notes – What is engineering ethics?”

  1. I think the idea of engineers banding together to protect one another in cases where whistle-blowing is deemed necessary is a good idea since currently whistleblowers seem to always end up in a much worse position than before. An ethical unions would be difficult, and it would need a lot of support, but engineers might the value in it. Some fields within engineers naturally have more ethical problems than others, so I’m sure fewer people from less ethically questionable fields would want to join. This problem might have a better solution in law instead of a union, but the law isn’t helping whistleblowers as much as it should.

    There definitely seems to a different set of values held by management compared to engineers. Management often sees only the monetary cost and the time cost, instead of the ethical cost, and it puts engineers in a tough spot. The managers might care more about the stockholders than the users of a product, or future generations. Sometimes communicating risks up the chain isn’t enough because your opinion might get ignored.

    Society seems to line up pretty closely with ethical ideas overall. It is legal to take pictures of people in public without permission, but it ethically and socially unacceptable. It is socially and ethically unacceptable to litter. Maybe eventually they will be the same thing.

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