Professional Ethics Lecture - ENGR 1100

ENGR 1100 – The PROFESSIONAL ETHICS Engineering Profession Leighton A. Ellis  OUTLINE OF LECTURE  What is Engineering?  What is a Profession?  What are the characteristics of a profession?  W...

ENGR 1100 – The PROFESSIONAL ETHICS Engineering Profession Leighton A. Ellis  OUTLINE OF LECTURE  What is Engineering?  What is a Profession?  What are the characteristics of a profession?  Why do professionals have special responsibilities?  Schools of Ethics  Professional Ethics  Wrong done by professionals  Code of Ethics  Consequences for breach of Code of Ethics  Guidelines for solving Ethical dilemmas  WHAT IS ENGINEERING?  Engineering is the profession in which a knowledge of the mathematical and natural sciences, gained by study, experience, and practice, is applied with judgment to develop ways to utilize, economically, the materials and forces of nature for the benefit of [hu]mankind.” - Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology (ABET)  WHAT IS A PROFESSION?  Examples of professions:  Physician, lawyer, engineer, accountants, etc.  Examples of non-professions:  Plumber, fashion model, sales clerk, etc.  What distinguishes professions from non- professions?  WHAT ARE THE CHARACTERISTICS OF PROFESSIONS?  Special knowledge and intellectual skills  Formal education, often postgraduate degree  Professional authority, judgment, peer review  Community sanction, accreditation, licensing  Professional Associations; in engineering  ICE, ASCE, CSCE, APETT, BAPE, JIE, APESL, etc. WHY DO PROFESSIONALS HAVE SPECIAL RESPONSIBILITIES?  Professionals have clients, not customers (what is the difference?)  Clients must trust professionals  Profession serves a public good  Codes of ethics: special responsibilities of professionals  Engineers have the responsibility to ensure the safety of people  ETHICS Ethics is a branch of philosophy that addresses the questions:  What does it mean to live a good life?  What makes a life worth living?  What constitutes right conduct?  What acts produce the greatest good?  Essentially the goal is to address, How should one make decisions in their life?  Examples:  Is it ever right to lie/steal/kill? If so, when?  How do we balance the rights of the individual versus the good of the whole?  SCHOOLS OF ETHICS Schools of ethics in Western philosophy can be divided, very roughly, into three sorts.  The first, drawing on the work of Aristotle, holds that the virtues (such as justice, charity, and generosity) are dispositions to act in ways that benefit both the person possessing them and that person’s society.  The second, defended particularly by Kant, makes the concept of duty central to morality: humans are bound, from a knowledge of their duty as rational beings, to obey the categorical imperative to respect other rational beings.  Thirdly, utilitarianism asserts that the guiding principle of conduct should be the greatest happiness or benefit of the greatest number  PROFESSIONAL ETHICS  Is a subset of the field of ethics that addresses:  How should engineers make decisions in their professional careers?  What constitutes right conduct in professional dealings?  What constitutes being a good engineer?  Unlike personal ethics, professional ethics is completed and decided upon by the professional community, represent the shared values of professional  Engineering ethics are the behavioral standards of the community of engineers that represent the shared values of all engineers.  ETHICS  Can you establish what is right by looking at behaviour that is wrong?  For most professionals there are a number of ways of being wrong - which are basically defined by how they are judged – e.g. professionals are wrong if they are:  Ignorant  Incompetent  Negligent  IGNORANCE  Means that the person does not know what needs to be done in a specific set of circumstances.  Hence, for example, an individual trying to design a beam may not know that it is necessary to take shear into account, and this ignorance could well lead to the failure of the beam.  An engineer should never take on work in an area in which he is ignorant of what is required.  INCOMPETENCE  Means that the person cannot do what needs to be done, even if they do know what they should do.  Hence for example, an engineer may know that he must check for shear in the design of a beam, but he must also know how to go about this and be able to do it properly.  It is not enough to know what needs to be done or to be able to recite the jargon and say the right things, it is also necessary to be able to do the right things.  NEGLIGENCE  Means not doing what should have been done, and has come, in colloquial terms, to be the antithesis of ‘professionalism’.  It means not making the necessary time or effort to ensure that the work is done fully and correctly.  ETHICS AS SHARED VALUES  The engineering community considers an act ethically right because it is intrinsically part of the shared values of engineers  Engineering ethics are not imposed on the individual engineer, but instead they are a statement of what it means to be an engineer  CODE OF ETHICS  The rules of conduct recognized in respect to a particular class of human actions or a particular group, culture, etc. Example Engineering Ethics.  The code of Ethics establishes minimum obligations which a professional is to have to: - each member of the profession, the public, his association, his employer, his client and himself.  ABET’S CODE OF ETHICS OF ENGINEERS FUNDAMENTAL PRINCIPLES Engineers uphold and advance the integrity, honor and dignity of the engineering profession by:  I. using their knowledge and skill for the enhancement of human welfare;  II. being honest and impartial, and servicing with fidelity the public, their employers and clients ;  III. striving to increase the competence and prestige of the engineering profession; and  IV. supporting the professional and technical societies of their disciplines. THE ICE RULES OF PROFESSIONAL CONDUCT 1. All members shall discharge their professional duties with integrity. 2. All members shall only undertake work that they are competent to do. 3. All members shall have full regard for the public interest, particularly in relation to matters of health and safety, and in relation to the well-being of future generations. 4. All members shall show due regard for the environment and for the sustainable management of natural resources. THE ICE RULES OF PROFESSIONAL CONDUCT (CONT’D) 5. All members shall develop their professional knowledge, skills and competence on a continuing basis and shall give all reasonable assistance to further the education, training and continuing professional development of others. 6. All members shall:  notify the Institution if convicted of a criminal offence;  notify the Institution upon becoming bankrupt or disqualified as a Company Director;  notify the Institution of any significant breach of the Rules of Professional Conduct by another member. CONSEQUENCES FOR BREACH OF THE CODE OF ETHICS  A written rebuke  A fine  Suspension of membership  Expulsion or termination of membership  A combination of the above  GUIDELINES FOR SOLVING ETHICAL DILEMMAS IN PROFESSIONAL PRACTICE  Step 1: Determine the facts in the situation. You must obtain all of the unbiased facts available.  Step 2: Define the stakeholders. Remember the stakeholders are those with a vested interest in the outcome.  Step 3: Assess the motivations of the stakeholders. In your assessment you should be using effective communication techniques and personality assessment.  GUIDELINES FOR SOLVING ETHICAL DILEMMAS IN PROFESSIONAL PRACTICE  Step 4: Formulate alternative solutions. These solutions should be based on the most complete information available, using basic ethical core values as a guide.  Step 5: Evaluate proposed alternatives. Initially, the professional should create only a short-list of ethical solutions. Within the short-list there may be a potential choice among two or more totally ethical solutions.  Step 6: Seek additional assistance, as appropriate. Assistance could be sought from engineering codes of ethics, previous cases, peers, reliance on personal experience.  GUIDELINES FOR SOLVING ETHICAL DILEMMAS IN PROFESSIONAL PRACTICE  Step 7: Select the best course of action. The best course would be that which satisfies the highest core ethical values.  Step 8: Implement the selected solution. To implement, the professional should take action as warranted.  Step 9: Monitor and assess the outcome. In the monitoring and assessment, the professional should record improvements for the next time.  CONCLUSION  We have reviewed the distinction between a professional and a non-professional  Professional ethics is a statement of shared values  We have identified the sources of wrong that may result from a person acting unprofessional  We have reviewed the Code of Ethics and understood its relevance to the engineering professional practice  Identified the consequences for breach of the Code of Ethics  We have outlined the guidelines for solving ethical dilemmas in professional practice  ASSIGNMENT (20%)  Research an engineering ethics case study. Search the Internet, books, and/or magazines to find an engineering project which resulted in an ethical dilemma. The following web site lists many ethical case studies:  www.onlineethics.org/Resources.aspx?resource-type=29_772  Write a one-page discussion of the case study including the following:  Describe the project in detail including the ethical dilemma.  How does the problem associated with this project qualify as engineering ethics?  Did the characters follow the ethical canons? (Which code of ethics are you referencing?) Why or why not?  What are some ways in which the ethical problem could have been dealt with? THE END ETHICS VIDEO