There is a play by the French philosopher Jean Paul Sartre called “Dirty hands”. It is a story about a veteran leader of the Communist party and a zealous young party member. At a crucial moment in the drama, the young man accuses his leader of betraying the party’s ideals. The older man answers this harsh accusation in the following words: “How you cling to your purity, young man! How afraid you are to soil your hands! All right stay pure! What good will it do…Well I have dirty hands. Right up to the elbows. I’ve plunged them in filth and blood. But what do you hope? Do you think you can govern innocently?”
Do you think we can engineer innocently? Or as Sheppard would question: How to engineer ethically when the objective risk of complex systems is given? (pg.137)
We all will agree it is important to integrate professional life with personal convictions in order to maintain moral integrity. In the course of practicing engineering, engineers solve problems. While the engineering decisions must be also guided by moral values, concern and respect for others, usually engineering decisions are generally guided by the project management variables of cost, schedule and quality. It is a challenge for the engineer in industry to find and ethical balance in the cost –schedule – quality competition.
How do you proceed when your boss is telling you: “These numbers aren’t going to work for us.” How do you engineer ethically when someone is suggesting you to add a higher number for the cable loss and telling you that we will have differences with the customer’s company in the testing equipment anyway? Do you feel extremely uncomfortable as this is not an internal data, but final results for a product? Do you tell your manager you could not proceed this way with integrity? Do you leave the company when suggested to proceed as instructed; after all, the numbers were very close to the required specs.
You truly understand that the outcome of any project is highly important for the company as that effect its reputation and revenue. On the other hand “…There are boundary conditions on making money and as a professional you don’t just do everything that you’re asked to do; you are not just a hired gun” ( Sheppard, pg.137). No, definitely you are not a hired gun, you only happen to have a small child to take care of, a visa status to deal with, a daily builds to pay, and so on. Then again, how do you engineer ethically?
With ethics, there frequently is no absolute right answer, just a personal best answer, and it all comes down to our choices and us. Then how we have been tough and how do we teach engineering ethics? In general students have a difficult time dealing with too much complexity. However, the real world is complex, dynamic, is not transparent, and this is true in the world of ethics as well as engineering. We can deal with complexity by exchanging ideas and creating models. However, the cases use as models in teaching engineering ethics are intended to reflect ethical problems that arise frequently in engineering under rather ordinary circumstances. Then, it is necessary that we understand the differences between models and real life.
In the 1920s, less than a third of the Engineering educators considered the study of differential equations to be necessary for an engineer’s education. In the engineering world of the future, a sound understanding of the theoretical and practical sides of engineering ethics will be as necessary to the proper education of engineers as a knowledge of differential equations is today, if not more so” (K.Stephan, 2001).
As of today, even that Criterion three of ABET's Engineering Criteria 2000 requires engineering programs to demonstrate that their graduates have an understanding of professional and ethical responsibility the teaching of engineering ethics is still not a high priority in engineering education. Engineering ethics course is not mandatory and when offered through engineering schools is integrated through the curriculum in a variety of different forms.
As I have personally experienced unethical issues on the work place, I believe that the development of sensitivity how ethics work in the real world and how ethical problems can affect the entire professional careers of engineers is essential knowledge for students graduating Engineering Schools.
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