Lecture 2

Engineering Management II
Professional Ethics
1.0 Introduction
Ethics may be explained as:
Ethics deals with what we believe to be good or bad and with the moral obligations that
these beliefs imply.
Ethics is a set of moral values and principles which form the standards guiding the code of
conduct of individuals, organizations and professions.
Ethics is the rules or standards governing the conduct of a person or the members of a
profession: medical ethics.
2.0 Code of Ethics
Express the rights, duties, and obligations of the members of the profession.
Provides framework for arriving at good ethical choices.
May not be comprehensive, but all inclusive.
Codes of ethics are written by specific groups of people for specific groups of people, each
group having its own purpose for existence and its own means of accomplishing its purpose.
Codes of ethics are to be reflections of the morally permissible standards of conduct which
members of a group make binding upon them.
Your code of ethics defines your responsibilities to society and the environment, your
employer or client, and your fellow engineers.

Code of Ethics
code of ethics means sets of standards for engineers' obligations to the public, their clients,
employers and the profession encompassing right conduct.
3.0 Professional Ethics
Personal and professional ethics are different from, but not exclusive of, each other. There is always
overlap between professional and personal ethics. However, professional ethics is more restrictive than
Personal ethics.
The figure below shows the relationships of courtesy, ethics, codes of ethics and laws.

Interaction Rules

4.0 Integrity
Integrity overlaps among the phenomena of morality, ethics and legality.
Integrity is thus not about good or bad, or right or wrong, or what should or should not be.
Integrity provides powerful access to increased performance for individuals, groups, or
organizations.
Morality, ethics and legality exist in a realm of virtues (high behaviour standard).

1
L. J. Ogutu Engineering Management II
 Morality, ethics and legality are about good and bad, right and wrong, or what should or
should not be.
5.0 Engineering Ethics
Engineering ethics is professional ethics, as opposed to personal morality. It sets the standards for
professional practice. It is an essential part of professional education because it helps students deal with
issues they will face in professional practice.

Engineering Ethics is the study of moral issues and decisions confronting individuals and organizations
engaged in engineering.
The institutionalization of engineering ethics is a social necessity due to the fact that the
actions of engineers can have such enormous impact on the lives of individuals, states,
cultures, the environment, and the entire planet.
It is necessary to develop with rigor and depth a concept of ethics and responsibility
commensurate with our immense technological powers in order to advance to a safer and
more just world.

Purpose of engineering ethics is to increase the skill of moral judgment and to develop the moral
autonomy of the engineer. The other purpose is to improve the skills necessary to think critically about
the ethical aspects and consequences of engineering design and work.

In discussing engineering ethics four questions are considered:

a What is engineering ethics?
b Why should it be emphasized in engineering education?
c How should it be taught? and
d When should it appear in the students education?
5.1 Core Issues and Challenges in Engineering Ethics
Core issues and challenges in engineering ethics are:
The importance of honesty in engineering, the various forms of dishonesty, and how a
conflict of interest can compromise an engineers judgment.
Issues of risk in engineering such as how risk should be defined and how much risk is
acceptable.
Engineer-manager conflicts within the context of a company or organization, the tensions
that can result from the engineer-manager relationship and how these conflicts might be
resolved.
Some impediments to responsible action to be considered. To explore and apply these
challenges in the context of contemporary issues.
Their impact on society and the government agencies, law enforcement, public behaviour,
social maturity, political parties, etc.
5.2 Objectives of Engineering Ethics
To compliment the technical knowledge derived from engineering education with the
development of moral values and the capacity for sound moral judgment.
To compliment the technical perspective with ethical analysis that leads to more responsible
decision making
To develop ethical decision making in engineering that will attend to the exigency of
universal moral principles and not only to the force of legislation, the law, or fear of
punishment.

2
L. J. Ogutu Engineering Management II
 To increase knowledge about the duties, obligations and moral responsibilities of engineers
in the practice of their professional labour.
To promote the knowledge and development of professional virtues in order to produce
excellent engineers that is committed to, and contributes to, social progress and social
justice.
5.3 Engineering Ethics: What? Why? How? and When?
Engineering ethics is professional ethics, as opposed to personal morality. It sets the
standards for professional practice,
It is an essential part of professional education because it helps students deal with issues
they will face in professional practice.

The discussion will be centred in 4 questions:

What is engineering ethics?
Why should it be emphasized in engineering education?
How should it be taught? and
When should it appear in the students education?

5.3.1 What is Engineering Ethics?

We begin with an obvious but important distinction, that between morality and professional ethics.

a. Morality
Morality refers to those standards of conduct that apply to everyone rather than only to
members of a special group. Ideally, these standards are ones that every rational person
wants every other to follow, even if everyone elses following them would mean that he
or she had to do the same.
b. Professional Ethics
Professional Ethics refer to those special morally permissible standards of conduct that,
ideally, every member of a profession wants every other member to follow, even if that
would mean having to do the same.

Ethics applies to members of a group simply because they are members of that group. Medical ethics
applies to people in medicine (and no one else); business ethics applies to people in business (and no
one else); and engineering ethics applies to engineers.

Engineering ethics is as much a part of what engineers in particular know as factors of safety, testing
procedures, or ways to design for reliability, durability, or economy. Engineering ethics is part of thinking
like an engineer.

5.3.2 Why should it be emphasized in engineering education?

One possible answer is the long and familiar list of tragedies, disasters, and scandals in which engineers
have been major players. Something should be done about all these bad things. These incidents are a
matter of concern to all of us, and especially to engineering students, who can learn from past mistakes.

3
L. J. Ogutu Engineering Management II
Big news for the media is usually bad news. This is why, when audiences are asked to think of media
coverage of ethical issues in engineering, they come up with a familiar list of disasters: the collapse of
houses in Kenya, the state of roads, and so on-and on.

But an exclusive focus on big news/bad news events may encourage engineering students to think of
ethics as primarily about othersthose relatively few engineers who have the misfortune of being
involved in something newsworthy.

Summary why engineering ethics are taught

To stimulate the ethical imagination of students. Too often, the educators agreed, young
professionals get caught by surprise when faced with an ethical problem in their professional
practice.
To help students recognize ethical issues. Although a conflict of interest may be lurking around the
corner, it may not announce itself to the involved parties until matters have gone too far.
To help students analyze key ethical concepts and principles those are relevant to the particular
profession or practice. Concepts come to mindpublic health and safety, quality, usefulness,
efficiency, cost/risk/benefit analysis, environmental harm, truthfulness, trustworthiness, loyalty.
To help students deal with ethical disagreement, ambiguity, and vagueness. The trick is to
acknowledge that some disagreement and uncertainty can be expected and should be tolerated, but
to refuse to accept the view, Everyones opinion is as good as anyone elses when it comes to
ethics.
To encourage students to take ethical responsibility seriously. In one sense, this should not be
difficult for engineering students, once they reflect on the obvious fact that engineering is not just a
technical or theoretical enterprise. Inherent in the exercise of engineering expertise is the provision
of useful, if not essential, services to clients, employers, customers, and the public. Usefulness,
quality, safety, efficiency, and cost effectiveness are not secondary features of this activity.
To instill reliable judgment and trustworthiness. So, if we examine what engineers do, and not
simply the technical content of engineering textbooks, it is easy to see that ethical responsibility
should be a central concern of the engineering profession and practice.
Ethics help engineers to guide their decisions to ensure they act responsibly. With knowledge &
skills, engineers have the capability to do services to the public. With this capability, engineers have
a tremendous responsibility to clients, individuals and society.
Stressing the role of ethics in the study and practice of engineering has at least three important
consequences:
It stimulates the recognition of the complexity of ethical issues in engineering
It generates better skills at responding to and solving moral problems
It shows that society considers ethics as essential to the formation of excellent and outstanding
professionals

5.3.3 How should it be taught?

There is widespread agreement that the best way to teach professional ethics is by using
cases. There are several modes of ethical analysis that can be useful in treating cases.
Engineers often face the problem of accepting gifts from vendors. On the one hand, most
engineers probably believe that accepting a cheap plastic pen from a vendor is permissible.
On the other hand, all engineers believe it is not permissible to accept a $10,000 cheque
from a vendor to specify a product that is both inferior and more expensive. But where do
we draw the line between these two extremes?

4
L. J. Ogutu Engineering Management II
 No to moral problems is conflict. We say that we are in a conflict over an issue, meaning
that we feel pulled in two different directions by competing considerations.

5.3.4 When should it appear in the students education?

We believe students should be introduced to ethics in as many times and places inside and
outside the curriculum as possible. Guest lectures, presentations to student chapters of
professional societies and many other possibilities present themselves.
Another approach is to introduce engineering ethics into required engineering courses. This
approach has the advantage of teaching engineering ethics in a way that brings home how
integral engineering ethics is to engineering practice. One way is to use videotapes or cases,
such as the ones mentioned in the previous section.
6.0 Conclusion
Engineering ethics appears to be emerging as a distinct discipline, taking its place with medical, legal and
business ethics. We believe the time is approaching when most if not all engineering schools will have
some program for introducing students to engineering professionalism and ethics. The time for thinking
about implementing such programs has arrived.

5
L. J. Ogutu Engineering Management II