Engineering Ethics II
Mini-case studies
Rajeev Bansal
With respect to the IEEE Code of Ethics for
engineers:
A. The rules are a bad thing because they encourage
engineers to spy on and betray their colleagues.
B. The rules are a useful legal defense in court,
when engineers can demonstrate that they
obeyed the rules.
C. The rules enhance the image of the profession
and hence its economic benefits to its members.
D. The rules are important in providing a summary
of what the public has a right to expect from
responsible engineers.
The IEEE Code of Ethics requires engineers to
conform to all but one of the following rules.
Which rule is not required?
A. Do not charge excessive fees.
B. Do not accept bribes.
C. Perform services only in the areas of personal
competence.
D. Avoid conflicts of interest.
You are an engineer and a manager at an aerospace company
with an important government contract supplying parts for a
spacecraft. As an engineer, you know that a projected launch
would face unknown risks because the equipment for which
you are responsible would operating outside its tested range of
behaviors. However, since you are also a manager you know
how important it is to your company that the launch be carried
out on schedule.
Should you:
A. Allow your judgment as a manager to override your
judgment as an engineer, and so permit the launching.
B. Toss a coin to decide, since one’s engineering and
managerial roles are equally important, so neither should
take precedence over the other and engineers.
C. Abstain from voting in any group decision in the matter,
since as bother a manager and an engineer one has a
conflict of interest in this case.
D. Allow your judgment as an engineer to override your
judgment as a manager, and do not permit the launching.
You are the engineer of record on a building project
which is behind schedule and urgently needed by
the clients. Your boss wants you to certify some
wiring installation as properly completed even
though you know some questionable installation
techniques were used.
Should you:
A. Certify it, and negotiate a raise from your boss as
your price for doing so.
B. Refuse to certify it.
C. Tell the clients about the problem, saying to
them that you will certify it if they want you to.
D. Certify it, but keep a close watch on the project
in the future in case any problems develop with
it.
Assume you are a quality control engineer, supervising the completion
of a product whose specification includes using only US-made parts.
However, at a very late stage, you notice that one of your subcontractors has supplied you with a part having foreign-made bolts in it
– but these aren’t very noticeable and would function identically to USmade bolts. Your customer urgently needs delivery of the finished
product. What should you do?
A. Say nothing and deliver the product with the foreign bolts
included, hoping this fact won’t be noticed by the customer.
B. Find (or, if necessary, invent) some roughly equivalent violation of
the contract or specifications for which the customer (rather than
your company) is responsible – then then tell them you’ll ignore
their violation if they ignore your company’s violation.
C. Tell the customer about the problem, and let them decide what they
wish you to do next.
D. Put all your efforts into finding legal loopholes in the original
specifications, or in the way they were negotiated, to avoid your
company appearing to have violated the specifications.
Your company buys large quantities of parts from various suppliers in a
very competitive market sector. As a professional engineer you often
get to make critical decisions on which supplier should be used for
which parts. A new supplier is very eager to get to your company’s
business. Not only that, but you find they are very eager to provide you
personally with many benefits – free meals at high-class restaurants and
free vacation weekends for supposed business meetings and
demonstrations, and other more confidential things such as expensive
gifts that arrive through the mail, club memberships and so on. What
should you do?
A. Do not accept any of the gifts that go beyond legitimate business
entertaining, even if your company would allow you to accept such
gifts.
B. Report all gifts, etc., to your company and let them decide whether
or not your should accept them.
C. Accept the gifts without telling your company, because you know
that your professional judgment about the supplier will not be
biased by the gifts.
D. Tell other potential suppliers about the gifts, and ask them to
provide you personally with similar benefits so you won’t be
biased in favor of any particular supplier.
You have been assigned to work on a proposal to the
government. The proposal manager tells you and several other
nonexempt workers that he’d like you to stay at home
Thursday and Friday and then come in and work Saturday and
Sunday but to report that you worked Thursday and Friday.
That way, you would work 40 hours for the week, but the
company would not have to pay you overtime for the weekend.
“After all,” he says, “proposal money is short.”
What do you do?
Answers offered are:
A. Grudgingly comply thinking these days a job is a job.
B. Check with Human Resources to see if company policy
permits this.
C. Call the ethics officer and allege unfair treatment.
D. Speak up immediately and question the manager’s right to
impose such a condition
A coworker is injured on the job. You are a witness
and could testify that the company was at fault.
What do you do?
The answers they provide are:
A. Don’t get involved.
B. Contact the injured coworker and offer to appear
on her behalf.
C. Report to the company what you saw to ensure
that the safety hazard is corrected.
D. Protect the company by refusing to appear as a
witness for the injured.
For several months now, one of your colleagues has
been slacking off, and you are getting stuck doing
the work. You think it is unfair. What do you do?
The candidate answers are:
A. Recognize this as an opportunity for you to
demonstrate how capable you are.
B. Go to your supervisor and complain about this
unfair workload.
C. Discuss the problem with your colleague in an
attempt to solve the problem without involving
others.
D. Discuss the problem with the human resources
department.
You are working on a government contract and are
convinced that a serious mischarging incident has
occurred. You also believe that it was deliberate
since the program was running out of funds.
The candidate answers are:
A. Call the Department of Defense hot line.
B. Inform the local newspaper of your suspicions.
C. Discuss it with your local audit office.
D. Send an anonymous note to your corporate ethics
office.
A friend of yours want to transfer to your
division but may not be the best qualified for the
job you have open. One other person, whom you
do not know, has applied. What do you do?
The mini-cases were adapted from the
material in the following sources:
• M. C. Potter (ed.), Fundamentals of
Engineering Review, 8th ed., Great Lakes
Press, 1999.
• Lockheed Martin’s Ethics Game (as presented
in Ethics in Engineering Practice and
Research by C. Whitbeck, Cambridge, 1998.)