The Level of Professional Ethics 1

[Starmass]

Dear All !

Here is a poser that concerns with ethics in Engineering Profession.
I wonder, how often we come across ethical issues in our day to day professional life that put each of us against the majority. We all know that for issues technical we all draw from our academic training.The technical base and the engineering principles being Universaly applicable. Can the same universality be applied to issues moral and ethical in one's professional life as well ?

 

[TheTick]

Personally, I draw no distinctions between my professional conduct and my obligations to God (as I understand), society, and my own conscience. Doing things in the name of a company does not excuse me from being personally responsible for my conduct.

Anyone who travels the "high road" will be in good company, but not abundant company.

Fortunately, I do not find myself in great conflict too often (the last time cost me my job, though).

Sanity! You're a madman!

 

[TJWATKINSPG]

To the Tick,

I too suffered the indignity of parting ways with employment on an ethical issue. (My choice to leave though) The only real consolation aside from good sleep was that the company no longer exists.

To answer from my point of veiw, Honesty helps in every situation except diplomacy. I am not a diplomat.

The truth will set you free. Best of luck. Geodude

 

[TheTick]

TJ, I like your point about diplomacy. I tell sales not to let anyone ask me anything unless they want the truth. It's my job to tell the truth. I leave it to them (sales and management) to spin and twist it to their needs.

 

[Starmass]

Hi!

Well, I have the following comment in this regard.

1. It is obvious; individuals who take an ethical stand tend to jeopardize their materialistic gains.

Hence, an individual cornered to a moralistic stand is bound to be influenced by the logistics of sustenance. Once drawn up against the wall - Out goes the Universal applicability of the moral values. This is true of most of the real life situations. So, how do we achieve a balance between sustenance and moral values?

 

[RDK]

I’ve heard it said that if you are honest because it’s the best policy then your honesty is already corrupted. If a better policy comes along then you would follow that one.

This does not however prevent one from telling the truth in the best possible light. While spin has some negative connotations, its often the best way to achieve an ethical goal. It is not dishonest to for example to state that this solution is not the best and here is an improvement on it. This is far better than saying that the proposed solution is useless and whoever thought it up is a complete idiot.

Remember we all see things differently. We do not see things as they are but as we are. Different people have different priorities and different weighting criteria for solutions to complex problems. This never makes them automatically wrong and us automatically right.

There are still some actions that are automatically and fundamentally wrong. I’m thinking of the Ford Pinto. Here some industrially exempt engineers made a cold calculation that it was more economical to pay some death benefits than to put a small fix on the car that would have prevented fires in rear end collusions. (That they were also wrong in their calculations as well as their ethics, shows how bad they were at engineering as well as morality.)

Another example would be participating in bribery or other distinctly illegal act.

Taking an ethical stand does not always jeopardize one’s materialistic goals. While true that it might harm one in the short term, those who take the moral high road usually do better in the long run. It just depends on the manner in which they do so.



Rick Kitson MBA P.Eng

Construction Project Management
From conception to completion

http://www.kitsonengineering.com

 

[GregLocock]

Re Pinto: Are you saying that your designs are always designed to maximum safety with no thought of cost or any other consideration?

If your designs are ever compromised (by say designing for just 100 year storms instead of 1000 year storms) EVEN if they meet industry or legal standards, then you have done the same as the Pinto engineers. Hopefully your maths and assumptions will be better than theirs.

Safety in cars has a cost. Somebody makes the decision on whether the net cost to society from having more accidents is going to be greater than the incremental cost from more expensive cars. You may not like it, but it has to happen.

By the way, how do you know that none of the engineers or managers working on the Pinto were PEs?



Cheers

Greg Locock

 

[melone]

Is there something wrong with the Pinto???? Should I take mine into the shop???

 

[GregLocock]

http://www.uoguelph.ca/~lsatchi/Disaster.html

for a handy overview, at least of the facts.







Cheers

Greg Locock

 

[IRstuff]

That's the second time today that engineers got slammed ;-(

Engineers are rarely, if ever involved in cost-benefit analysis, particularly 30 years ago. While the engineers at Ford probably were responsible for determining the cost of the repair, Ford most likely had their staff lawyers and actuarians determine the cost of injuries.

That type of final tradeoff is NEVER made at the engineer's level.

TTFN

 

[FrenchCAD]

And I guess that's the main difference between Euro and US engineers. Speaking about myself, I've always been taught to think in terms of costs while creating mechanical designs. Of course, this is the most etheral -hence difficult- part on the job, but we aren't formed to think 100% at it. We just have to keep the cost in mind. Euro market and US market are both really different (I knew it cause I lived overthere before coming back in France) and so engineers don't focus on the same priorities.

Hence, the question of proffessional ethics sounds more like a question of personnal ethics to me.

FrenchCAD
Goodrich Actuation Systems France
Airbus A380 group
cyril.guichard@goodrich.com

 

[IRstuff]

Is there supposed to be a difference? Is a "professional" lie somehow different from a personal lie?

I think not. A lie is just a lie.

There was some confusion about my last post. Engineers in the U.S are concerned about cost, when presented the problem, e.g., buy vs. make, life-cycle cost, CAIV, etc.

However, cost of a human life or cost of environmental impact is not a clearly engineerable question. There is too much cultural and temporal context involved. One could and often does calculate how many lifes could be affected by our actions, but the cost of those lives are predicated on intangibles that are indeed ethereal.

Consider the previous postings about the Pinto and the "hundreds of innocent lives" lost. The Pinto was summarily banished from the marketplace and we argue about whether Ford made a trade of $11 per vehicle. Yet, in the US alone, about 400,000 people die from smoking-related cancer every year for decades before and to come. I don't hear any discussion about the responsibility of the "engineers" or "scientists" involved in the creation and promulgation of cigarettes. So, did society place a lower "price" on the life of a smoker? Is it because they're not "innocent"?

TTFN

 

[Starmass]

Hi!

Let us identify the factors that make the engineering principles Universal

a) Measurable
b) Retraceable
c) Definite
D)Independent of Human Emotions
e)Independent of Human needs
f)Independent of Economics

Perhaps others can add to the above list.

Can we really identify some such Universally applicable principles with regard to " Ethical Values in our Professional life" . This has to be really independent of
an individual, a product, a location.

For sure our discussion is not to be a primer in ethics. Perhaps we can aim at identifying a certain ethical aspects from real life situations wherein a certain measurable Universality can be extracted. Localized response cannot be Universally applied. What with America Vs Europe. What with Pinto Vs Honda. In such cases it cannot be a Universal principle.

Indeed, if it is really difficult to extract such a universal character of the moral aspects of our lives. Can it be concluded that Morality as beauty is in the mind of the beholder. What is morally correct to a person / region / company may or may not be true for others.

Rgds
MASS

 

[GregLocock]

I'm not sure if that one is easier or more difficult to answer.

If I can just get back to cars. When airbags were introduced they were very expensive, for several reasons. Now, I assume we'll agree that airbags save lives (maybe not in the most cost effective fashion, but let's leave that to one side). They are a good choice for this example because they can be used or not without fundamental changes to much of the rest of the car.

Somebody had to decide whether they would be offered on each model, on a case by case basis. That person or persons has made a dollars vs lives saved decision, EXACTLY like the Pinto team.

Are you suggesting that anyone who was working on a vehicle which did not have an airbag as an option should have taken some effective action (that no-one has identified yet)? After all, a peer review of the design would say, well, airbags are available, they are safe, therefore they should be fitted.



Cheers

Greg Locock

 

[FrenchCAD]

Isn't it what is done actually? I mean, airbags are sold on 99% of new cars, arent they? How come did we reach this percentage? because one car manufacturer once decided the cost of this option was worth putting it into new car models in regard of the number of lives it was able to save. This manufacturer sure made money whit the sell of this option as a serial product in its cars, but is it really a problem? What did this manufacturer with this money? They probably thought at new safety systems, since customers are asking for them now. And it's the basics of market's laws.

As long as it goes in the way of the customer, I think there is no need to complain much.

FrenchCAD
Goodrich Actuation Systems France
Airbus A380 group
cyril.guichard@goodrich.com

 

[GregLocock]

But the first generation of airbag were so expensive that they only got fitted to expensive cars.

The argument here seems to be that if a technology (safer fuel tanks, airbags) is available that is safer, then it should be fitted REGARDLESS of cost.

My argument is, simply, that at some point someone makes a cost/benefit decision. PE, lawyer, manager, or industry exempt engineer, someone makes that decision. In other words disparaging the Pinto team for making that sort of decision is hypocritical. They may well have made the wrong decision, nonetheless it had to be made.


Cheers

Greg Locock

 

[FrenchCAD]

Indeed. But when something goes wrong, there is always someone who have to suffer the anger of the company in regard of this failure. Why is it so? Maybe it is so that the company thinks it will not loose its customers' trust while showing that the "bad" guys are fired. It's sure isn't the best way to solve economical problems related to a project, but sadly, it's the most common one.

FrenchCAD
Goodrich Actuation Systems France
Airbus A380 group
cyril.guichard@goodrich.com

 

[JAE]

Just a few thoughts to augment the above, interesting discussion:

The basis of ethics (at least in the U.S. engineering community) is formulated similar to the "standard of care" - at least that is what the various states do in creating their ethics sections in their engineering laws.

What would a similar, competent engineer do in a similar circumstance? What specific ethical duties are laid out in the engineering laws of each state?

These questions help to develop the general understanding of what is ethical in engineering practice. For the case of the Pinto, this is an industrial product whereby the normal engineering practice laws do not necessarily govern. The authorities at Ford Motors, once presented with facts of the Pinto explosions, would have to face up to similar questions - what is the standard of care of the industry in general? Does the Pinto explode more frequently than other vehicles? Is our statistical risk higher than similar model cars in the industry?

The idea is not (or shouldn't be) to ELIMINATE risk, but to minimize it to some acceptable standard of the community involved. Ralph Nader's book "Unsafe At Any Speed", was an attack on the basic concept that there will always be risk, no matter what you do. He was attacking, I believe, the Chevy Corsair. How can something be simply "unsafe"? You must compare it to some level of acceptable risk, not the absence of risk.

If the overall standard of the industry is unacceptable to the general public, then efforts will naturally work to reduce the risk (the recent efforts at reducing tobacco usage is one example).

 

[PSE]

Your position of influence determines the potential impact of ethical (or unethical) behavior. I make no distinction between licensed or Industrial Exempt Engineers. RDK, I wonder if the Pinto's produced in the Ontario assembly plant were free of flaws. Apparently the liscensed engineers supporting the production allowed the cars to be built. You would certainly hope that they were familiar enough with the design to be able to tool up and build it. In my position, I can have a direct impact on the product produced and an indirect impact on the design so my ethics can directly impact the customer. If you have the approving authority, you have the greatest responsibility. Some things have to be taken on trust and mistakes will be made. The true tragedies are when nothing is done to rectify an error or to prevent further recurrence.

Regards,

"Undetectable Errors are infinite in variety in contrast to detectable errors which by definition are limited."