ENG-410 Professional & Ethical Practice

Fall 2021

Lecture 5

Understanding Ethical Problems

 ENG-410 Professional Ethical Practice

Code of Ethics
Whistle-Blowing

What is Whistle-blowing?
• Informing the public or higher management of unethical
or illegal behaviors by for example a peer colleague or
direct supervisor
• The line between rights and responsibility
• Types:
• Internal: within organization (ex: going to the
organization heads or board of directors)
• External: ex: going to news paper or law-
enforcement authorities

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 ENG-410 Professional Ethical Practice

Code of Ethics
Whistle-Blowing

What is Whistle-blowing?
• OR:
• Anonymous: ex: anonymous memo or phone call.
Request not to release names
• Acknowledged: stand for it

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 ENG-410 Professional Ethical Practice

Code of Ethics
Whistle-Blowing

Is it a disloyalty?
• Corporate point of view: sees it very bad, could lead to
distrust, disharmony, inability to work in a team or with other
employees

When you may use whistle-blowing?

Need:
• important harm that could be avoided
• Not everything  sense of proportion

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 ENG-410 Professional Ethical Practice

Code of Ethics
Whistle-Blowing
When you may use whistle-blowing?

Need:
• important harm that could be avoided
• Not everything  sense of proportion

Proximity:
• Need to be in a very clear position to report (no hearsaying,
must be sure)
• First hand knowledge
• Enough expertise in the area or the domain to make realistic
assessment
• “don’t undertake work in areas outside your expertise” 
code of ethics

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 ENG-410 Professional Ethical Practice

Code of Ethics
Whistle-Blowing
When you may use whistle-blowing?

Capability:
• Reasonable chance of success in stopping the harmful
activity
• Don’t risk it for no chance to stop it!

If all these things exist, then..

• If all other lines of actions have been explored and shut off
• If there is no one else capable
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 ENG-410 Professional Ethical Practice

Code of Ethics
Whistle-Blowing
Preventing Whistle-Blowing
• Probably impossible to stop all wrongdoing
• Fire whistle blower? In effective and ethically unacceptable

• Force strong ethics culture:

• Clear commitment to ethical behavior from
management, mandatory ethics training, ..

• Clear lines of communication (clear path to air the issues

and try to fix)

• Willingness from management to admit mistakes (publicly if

necessary)

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 ENG-410 Professional Ethical Practice

Code of Ethics

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 ENG-410 Professional Ethical Practice

Code of Ethics

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 ENG-410 Professional Ethical Practice

Code of Ethics

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 ENG-410 Professional Ethical Practice

Ethical Problem Solving Techniques

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 ENG-410 Professional Ethical Practice

Ethical Problem-Solving Techniques

Imagine:
• Living near electrical power distribution system increases risk of cancer
• Hazard from weak low frequency magnetic fields
• Engineers and electric companies started to figure out design solutions
to reduce the radiation
• “Health and safety” issue

• However, magnetic field is poorly understood how engineers decide if it is

ethical or not to work on these products design??

• We will add on the code of ethics and moral theories and provide more tools
for analysing and resolving ethical dilemmas

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 ENG-410 Professional Ethical Practice

Ethical Problem-Solving Techniques

• How to Analyse Ethical Problems:
– First, understand the issues (to help putting the
problem in the proper framework)
– Ethical issues could be split into:
• Factual
• Conceptual
• Moral

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 ENG-410 Professional Ethical Practice

Ethical Problem-Solving Techniques

• Factual issues: “What are the facts?”
– Seems straightforward, but not always
clear (controversial)
– Ex: abortion rights discussion (when life
begins?)
– Ex: global warming (the global warming
process is not fully understood)

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 ENG-410 Professional Ethical Practice

Ethical Problem-Solving Techniques

• Conceptual Issues: “Meaning or
applicability of an idea”
– Ex: bribe vs acceptable gifts (value of the
gift? COI? Relations? Affects Decision
making?) (tickets for game!!)
– Ex: certain business information is
proprietary

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 ENG-410 Professional Ethical Practice

Ethical Problem-Solving Techniques

• Moral Issues:
– After resolving Factual and Conceptual issues
(at least to the extent possible)  determine
which moral principle is applicable to the
situation
– Resolution of moral issues is often more
obvious.
• Ex: gift example: just after determining if it is a
gift or is really bribe  appropriate action is
clear

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 ENG-410 Professional Ethical Practice

Ethical Problem-Solving Techniques

• How to handle the controversies
– Factual issues: more research establish the truth (more
facts)  can agree on some areas or even reach a
consensus
– Conceptual issues: agreeing on the meaning and
applicability of terms and concepts
– Further analysis of the concepts.
– Moral issues: agreement on which moral principles are
pertinent and how they should be applied

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 ENG-410 Professional Ethical Practice

Ethical Problem-Solving Techniques

Case-study: “Paradyne Computers”

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 ENG-410 Professional Ethical Practice

Ethical Problem-Solving Techniques

• 1980: Bid to supply the Social Security
Administration (SSA)
• Factual issues:
• Proposal clearly specifying that only
existing systems are allowed
• They did not have any such system
running and have never tested the
operating system on the product !!
• Hired former employer of SSA  help
lobby SSA
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 ENG-410 Professional Ethical Practice

Ethical Problem-Solving Techniques

 Issues are clear and look not
Controversial
(However: they claimed that they did not
do anything wrong and it is just a common
business behaviour !!)
• Conceptual issues: whether bidding to
provide an off-the-shelf product (while
actual product is in planning phase!!)
• Is placing their label over the real
manufacturer label is legal?
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 ENG-410 Professional Ethical Practice

Ethical Problem-Solving Techniques

lobbing your former employer?
These questions for sure will open
discussion.

• Moral issues:
• Lying is an acceptable business practice?
• Is it alright to be deceptive to get the
contract?

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 ENG-410 Professional Ethical Practice

Ethical Problem-Solving Techniques

What are the answers for these questions

are they clear??

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 ENG-410 Professional Ethical Practice

Ethical Problem-Solving Techniques

Line Drawing:
– Useful in clear moral principles situations
But has “gray area” which ethical principle
applies
– Drawing a line along which various
examples and hypothetical situations are
placed

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 ENG-410 Professional Ethical Practice

Ethical Problem-Solving Techniques

Line Drawing Example

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 ENG-410 Professional Ethical Practice

Ethical Problem-Solving Techniques

Line Drawing:

Let’s start by drawing a line and placing the positive and

negative paradigms
on it:

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 ENG-410 Professional Ethical Practice

Ethical Problem-Solving Techniques

Line Drawing:
Now let’s establish some other hypothetical examples for
consideration:
1. The company dumps the chemical into the lake. At 5 ppm, the
chemical will be
harmless, but the town’s water will have an unusual taste.
2. The chemical can be effectively removed by the town’s existing
water-treatment
system.
3. The chemical can be removed by the town with new
equipment that will be
purchased by the company.

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 ENG-410 Professional Ethical Practice

Ethical Problem-Solving Techniques

Line Drawing:
Now let’s establish some other hypothetical examples for
consideration:
4. The chemical can be removed by the town with new
equipment for which the
taxpayer will pay.
5. Occasionally, exposure to the chemical can make people feel
ill, but this only
lasts for an hour and is rare.
6. At 5 ppm, some people can get fairly sick, but the sickness
only lasts a week, and
there is no long-term harm.
7. Equipment can be installed at the plant to further reduce the
waste level to
1 ppm.
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 ENG-410 Professional Ethical Practice

Ethical Problem-Solving Techniques

Line Drawing:
Now let’s redraw our line with the examples inserted
appropriately:

Subjective, may be need more facts? May be

Now let’s complete the exercise by denoting our problem
other factors such as politics or community
by a “P” and inserting it at the appropriate place along the
relationship
line.

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 ENG-410 Professional Ethical Practice

Case Discussion

Chernobyl case study

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L9xVTx6ZiWY

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