The Contemporary Pinoy Civil Engineer and its Ethical Values: A Case Study

INTRODUCTION

In the professions of engineering, codes of ethics play an important role in identifying and supporting

professional values. A code of ethics sets guidelines for ethically-appropriate professional action,

identifying the norms of the profession or organization. A code of ethics in a particular profession sets rules

and/or guidelines for appropriate/ethical action for its members. Almost every sub-discipline in engineering

has its own more specific code of ethics.

As we saw with codes of ethics protecting human subjects in research, codes play an important role in

defining the ethical identity of professions through the establishment of rules and guidelines for ethical

behaviours. Many of these rules and normative guidelines are shared across professional cultures –

avoiding harms to individual research subjects in the medical professions, for example, finds a direct

parallel with avoiding harms to individual stakeholders within professional engineering. But the ways these

norms are specified and articulated in specific codes of ethics helps to uniquely identify that profession.

By providing guidelines for appropriate and ethical action for its members through articulation of shared

values, a code of ethics acts, within professional settings, in the same way that responsible conduct of

research (RCR) guidelines function within research and academic spaces.

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