1

ENGINEERING ETHICS
CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION
2 OBJECTIVES

1. Define engineering ethics

2. Why it is important to study engineering ethics
3. Distinction between professional and personal ethics
4. How ethical problems similar to engineering design
3 CASE FOR DISCUSSION

• Mary discovers that her plant is discharging a substance into the river that is not
regulated by the government.
• She decides to do some reading about the substance and finds that some of the studies
suggest that it is carcinogenic.
• Mary believes she has an obligation to protect the public, but she also wants to be a loyal
employee.
• The substance will probably be very expensive to remove.
4 CASE FOR DISCUSSION

• Her boss advises, “Forget about this issue until the government makes us do something.
• Then all the other plants will have to spend money too, and we will not be at a
competitive disadvantage.”

• What should Mary do?

5 CASE FOR DISCUSSION

• Tom is designing a new chemical plant.

• One of his responsibilities is to identify the valves to be used in a certain portion of the
plant.
• Before he makes his final decision, a salesperson for one of the firms that manufactures
valves invites Tom to have their lunch together.

• Should Tom accept the offer?

6 CASES

What you have to consider

when making decisions in
Important those cases?
Questions
According to what
standards are these actions
right or wrong in those
cases?
7 POWERFUL QUESTION

• What are your obligations /

responsibilities as a professional
engineer?
8 BACKGROUND IDEAS

• The cases above are just examples of the ethical problems faced by engineers in the course of
their professional practice.

• Ethical cases can go far beyond issues of public safety and may involve bribery, fraud,
environmental protection, fairness, honesty in research and testing, and conflicts of
interest.
• During their undergraduate education, engineers receive training in basic and engineering
sciences, problem-solving methodology, and engineering design, but generally receive little
training in business practices, safety, and ethics.
9 BACKGROUND IDEAS

• This problem has been partially corrected, as some engineering education programs now
have courses in what is called engineering ethics.
• Indeed, the Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology (ABET), the body
responsible for accrediting undergraduate engineering programs in the United States, has
mandated that ethics topics be incorporated into undergraduate engineering curricula.
10 THE PURPOSE OF THIS COURSE

• To provide a resource for the study of engineering ethics.

• To help future engineers be prepared for confronting and resolving ethical dilemmas,
such as the design of an unsafe product like the Pinto Car, that they might
encounter during their professional careers.
• To learn techniques for analyzing and resolving ethical problems when they arise.
11 ETHICS AND MORALS

• Morals are principles on which one’s judgments of right and wrong are based.
• Ethics are guiding principles of conduct of an individual or group.
• The main difference between ethics and morals is that ethics are relatively
uniform whereas morals are heavily influenced by culture and religion.
• Therefore, different people from different cultural and religious backgrounds
might have different morals but agree on their profession’s ethics and thus are
guided by it.
12 ETHICS AND MORALS
13 WHAT IS ENGINEERING ETHICS?

• An article from the Harvard business school defined engineering ethics as:
• “Engineering ethics are principles and guidelines engineers follow to ensure their decision-
making is aligned with their obligations to the public, the client and the industry” (Harvard
business school, 2023)

• As per the definition outlined by Charles Fleddermann:

• Engineering ethics is the rules and standards governing the conduct of engineers in their role
as professionals.

• NSPE Ethics Study Guide

14 ELABORATION ON THE DEFINITION

• Engineering ethics encompasses the more general definition of ethics, but applies it more
specifically to situations involving engineers in their professional lives.
• Thus, engineering ethics is a body of philosophy indicating the ways that engineers should
conduct themselves in their professional capacity.
15 WHY STUDY ENGINEERING ETHICS?

• We might think that the “ethical thing to do” is always clear and simple.
• However, a lot of the ethical situations faced in the engineering profession are complex
and do not have obvious solutions due to conflicting ethical principles.
16 WHY STUDY ENGINEERING ETHICS?

1. Increased awareness due to the publicity of high-profile engineering failures.

2. Engineering decisions can impact public health, safety, business practices and politics.
3. Engineers should be aware of ethical implications as they make decisions in the
workplace.
4. Ethical problems in engineering are often complex and involve conflicting ethical
principles.
5. Engineers must be able to navigate ambiguous ethical situations to reach a defensible
decision.
17 MORAL AUTONOMY

• Moral autonomy is the ability to think critically and independently about moral issues
and to apply this moral thinking to situations that arise in the course of professional
engineering practice.
• This course will foster the moral autonomy of future engineers.
18 ETHICAL AWARENESS

• Following the increased awareness of ethics in the field of engineering, many major
corporations have established an ethics office.
• Thereby fostering an ethical culture by enabling engineers to express their ethical
concerns regarding, for example, safety and corporate business practices, without
being retaliated against, which will, in turn, help to head off ethical problems before
they start.
19 PERSONAL VS. PROFESSIONAL ETHICS

• It is important to make a distinction between personal ethics and professional, or

business, ethics, although there isn’t always a clear boundary between the two.
• Personal ethics deals with how we treat others in our day-to-day lives.
• However, professional ethics often involves choices on an organizational level rather than
a personal level.

• Is professional ethics affected by personal or society's ethics (culture) ?

Check google scholar

20 THE ORIGINS OF ETHICAL THOUGHT

• Before proceeding, it is important to acknowledge in a general way the origins of the

ethical philosophies that we will be discussing in this course.
• The Western ethical thought that is discussed here originated in the philosophy of the
ancient Greeks and their predecessors.
• Interestingly, non-Western cultures have independently developed similar ethical
principles.
21 THE ORIGINS OF ETHICAL THOUGHT

• Although for many individuals, personal ethics are rooted in religious beliefs, this is
not true for everyone.
• There are many ethical people who are not religious, and others appear to be
religious but they are not ethical.
• So while the ethical principles that we will discuss come to us filtered through a
religious tradition, these principles are now widely accepted regardless of their
origin.
• We won’t need to refer explicitly to religion in order to discuss ethics in the
engineering profession.
22 ETHICS AND THE LAW

• What is the role of law in engineering ethics?

• The practice of engineering is governed by many laws on the international and/or
national levels.
• Many of these laws are based on ethical principles, although many are purely of a
practical, rather than a philosophical, nature.
23 ETHICS AND THE LAW

• Ethics feeds into the law – in the sense that the Law is made based on what is ethical or
perceived to be ethical.
• Hence, the law might be changed to incorporate new revelations that renders a previously
ethical matter to be unethical and vice versa.
• You might find yourself in a situation when the Law did not catch to the ethics of the practice,
e.g., some practices might be deemed recently unethical but yet legal and vice versa.
• Thus, it is your duty as a professional engineer to bring forth any detrimental and “unethical”
practices to light to help instigating legal measures to regulate said practices.
24 ETHICS AND THE LAW

• There is also a distinction between what is legal and what is ethical.

• Many things that are legal could be considered unethical.
• For example, designing a process that releases a known toxic, but unregulated, substance
into the environment is probably unethical, although it is legal.
25 ETHICS AND THE LAW

Ethical

Ethical but illegal Ethical and legal

Illegal Legal

Unethical and illegal Unethical but legal

Unethical
26 ETHICS AND THE LAW

• As an engineer, you are always minimally safe if you follow the requirements of the
applicable laws.
• But in engineering ethics, we seek to go beyond the dictates of the law.
• Our interest is in areas where ethical principles conflict and there is no legal guidance for
how to resolve the conflict.
27 ETHICS, LAW AND RELIGION

RELIGION

ETHICS

LAW
28 ETHICS PROBLEMS ARE LIKE DESIGN PROBLEMS

• Ethical and design problems are similar because both, when solved, do not lead to a single
correct answer but a range of correct answers.
• It embodies the engineer's approach to finding a solution to satisfy the required
specifications of the end product.
• Thus, in engineering design and, evidently, ethical problem solving, there is no
unique correct answer!
29 CASE STUDIES

• Before starting to learn the theoretical ideas regarding engineering ethics, let’s begin by
looking at a very well-known engineering ethics case:
• The space shuttle Challenger accident.
• At this point we will look at a brief synopsis of the case to further illustrate the types of
ethical issues and questions that arise in the course of engineering practice.
30 CHALLENGER ACCIDENT

• The space shuttle Challenger was launched in extremely cold weather.

• During the launch, an O-ring on one of the solid-propellant boosters, made more brittle
by the cold and thus failed.
• This failure led to an explosion soon after liftoff.
31 CHALLENGER ACCIDENT

• Engineers who had designed this booster had concerns about launching under these cold
conditions and recommended that the launch be delayed, but they were overruled by
their management (some of whom were trained as engineers), who didn’t feel that there
were enough data to support a delay in the launch.
• The shuttle was launched, resulting in the well-documented accident.
32 CHALLENGER ACCIDENT

• On the surface, there appear to be no engineering ethical issues here to discuss, rather, it
seems to simply be an accident.
• Engineers recommended that there be no launch, but they were overruled by
management.
• Indeed, this can be considered an accident - no one wanted the Challenger to explode
-but there are still many interesting questions that should be asked.
33 CHALLENGER ACCIDENT

• When there are safety concerns, what is the engineer’s responsibility before the launch
decision is made?
• After the launch decision is made, but before the actual launch, what duty does the
engineer have?
• If the decision doesn’t go the engineers’ way, should they complain to upper
management?
• Or, bring the problem to the attention of the press?
• After the accident has occurred, what are the duties and responsibilities of the engineers?
34 CHALLENGER ACCIDENT

• As an engineer, you will need to be familiar with ideas about the nature of the engineering
profession, ethical theories, and the application of these theories to situations that are likely
to occur in professional practice.
• Many cases will be postmortem examinations of disasters
• While others may involve an analysis of situations in which disaster was averted when many of
the individuals involved made ethically sound choices and cooperated to solve a problem.
• When studying a case several years after the fact and knowing the ultimate outcome, it is easy
to see what the right decision should have been.