Chapter 2 - Moral Reasoning and Codes of Ethics

Moral Reasoning and
Code of Ethics
Introduction
• Moral dilemmas are situations in which
moral reasons come into conflict, or in
which the applications of moral values are
unclear, and it is not immediately obvious
what should be done.
• Moral (or ethical) dilemmas arise in
engineering, as elsewhere, because moral
values are many and varied, and can make
competing claims.
Example of a case that
may lead to a moral dilemma
Engineer John, an environmental engineer, is retained
by a major industrial owner to examine certain lands
adjacent to an abandoned industrial facility formerly
owned and operated by the owner. The owner’s attorney
requests as a condition of the retention agreement that
Engineer John sign a secrecy provision whereby
Engineer John would agree not to disclose any data,
findings, conclusions, or other information relating to his
examination of the owner’s land to any other party
unless ordered by a court. Engineer John signs the
secrecy provision.
• Dilemma: lack of clarity about how two moral
values applied in the situation: (a) confidentiality
and (b) the paramount responsibility to protect the
public safety, health and welfare.
• Engineer John signs the confidentiality
agreement. If dangers to the public are discovered
and if the client (the owner) refuses to remedy
them, the engineer would be obligated to notify the
proper authorities.
• But should Engineer John go back to the client
(owner) and ask to have the secrecy provision
revoked?
• And if the client (owner) refuses, should Engineer
John break the contract, a step that might have
legal repercussions? Or should Engineer John
simply hope that no problems will arise and
continue with his or her contracted work,
postponing any hard decisions until later?
• As these questions indicate, dilemmas can
generate further dilemmas.
• In this instance, possibly more than one
option is reasonable – if not ideal, at least
permissible.
Steps in
Resolving Ethical Dilemmas
Reasonable solutions to ethical dilemmas
are clear, informed, and well-reasoned.
– Clear refers to moral clarity: clarity about
which moral values are at stake and how they
pertain to the situation. It also refers to
conceptual clarity: precision in using the key
concepts (ideas) applicable in the situation.
Steps in
– Informed means knowing and appreciating
the implications of morally relevant facts. In
addition, it means being aware of alternative
coures of action and what they entail.
Steps in
– Well-reasoned means that good judgment is
exercised in integrating the relevant moral
values and facts to arrive at a morally
desirable solution.
Steps in
• These characteristics of reasonable
solutions also enter as steps in resolving
ethical dilemmas.
• Consider the following example of a moral
dilemma.
A Hypothetical Case
A chemical engineer working in the environmental
division of a computer manufacturing firm learns that her
company might be discharging unlawful amounts of lead
and arsenic into the city sewer. The city processes the
sludge into a fertilizer used by local farmers. To ensure
the safety of both the discharge and the fertilizer, the city
imposes restrictive laws on the discharge of lead and
arsenic. Preliminary investigations convince the
engineer that the company should implement stronger
pollution controls, but her supervisor tells her the cost of
doing so is prohibitive and that technically the company
is in compliance with the law. She is also scheduled to
appear before town officials to testify in the matter. What
should she do?
1. Moral Clarity
Identify the relevant moral values.
– The most useful resource in identifying ethical
dilemmas in engineering are professional
code of ethics, as interpreted in light of one’s
ongoing professional experience.
1. Moral Clarity
The AIChE indicates the engineer has at
least three responsibilities:
– “Issue statements or present information only in
an objective and truthful manner.”
– “Act in professional matters for each employer or
client as faithful agents or trustees, avoiding
conflicts of interest and never breaching
confidentiality.”
– “Hold paramount the safety, health, and welfare
of the public and protect the environment in the
performance of their professional duties.”
2. Conceptual Clarity
Be clear about key concepts.
– Professionalism requires being a faithful
agent of one’s employer, but does that mean
doing what one’s supervisor directs or doing
what is good for the corporation in the long
run?
– Does being “objective and truthful” mean
never lying, or does it mean revealing all
pertinent information?
3. Informed About The Facts.
Obtain relevant information.
– Sometimes the primary difficulty in resolving
moral dilemmas is uncertainty about the facts,
rather than conflicting values per se.
– For the case at hand, the chemical engineer
must check and recheck the findings, perhaps
asking colleagues for their perspectives.
4. Informed About The Options
Consider all (realistic) options.
– For example, the chemical engineer might be
able to suggest a new course of research that
will improve the removal of lead and arsenic.
– Or she might discover that the city’s laws are
needlessly restrictive and should be revised.
5. Well-Reasoned
Make a reasonable decision.
– Arrive at a carefully reasoned judgment by
weighing all the relevant moral reasons and
facts.
– If there is no ideal solution, as is often the
case, we seek a satisfactory one.
Right-Wrong or Better-Worse?
We can divide ethical dilemmas into two broad
categories.
– On the one hand, many dilemmas have solutions
that are either right or wrong. “Right” means that
one course of action is obligatory, and failing to do
that action is unethical (immoral).
– On the other hand, some dilemmas have two or
more reasonable solutions, none of which is
mandatory, but one of which should be chosen.
These solutions might be better or worse than
others in some respects, but not necessarily in all
respects.
Importance of Codes
• Codes of ethics state the moral
responsibilities of engineers as seen by the
profession and as represented by a
professional society.
• Because they express the profession’s
collective commitment to ethics, codes are
enormously important, not only in stressing
engineers’ responsibilities but also in
supporting the freedom needed to meet
them.
Importance of Codes
Codes of ethics play at least eight
essential roles:
– Serving and protecting the public
– Guidance
– Offering inspiration
– Establishing shared standards
– Supporting responsible professionals
– Contributing to education
– Deterring wrongdoing
– Strengthening a profession’s image
1. Serving and protecting the public
Engineering involves advanced expertise
that professionals have and the public lacks.
– Accordingly, professionals stand in a fiduciary*
relationship with the public: trust and
trustworthiness are essential.
– A code of ethics functions as a commitment by
the profession as a whole that engineers will
serve the public health, safety, and welfare.
– In one way or another, the remaining functions
of codes all contribute to this primary function.
*of, relating to, or involving a confidence or trust

2. Guidance
Codes provide helpful guidance by
articulating the main obligations of
engineers.
– Because codes should be brief to be effective,
they offer mostly general guidance.
– Nonetheless, when well written, the codes
identify primary responsibilities.
3. Inspiration
Because codes express a profession’s
collective commitment to ethics, they
provide a positive stimulus (motivation) for
ethical conduct.
– In a powerful way, they voice what it means to
be a member of a profession committed to
responsible conduct in promoting the safety,
health, and welfare of the public.
4. Shared standards
The diversity of moral viewpoints amount
individual engineers makes it essential
that professionals establish explicit
standards, in particular minimum (but
hopefully high) standards.
– In this way, the public is assured of a standard
of excellence on which it can depend, and
professionals are provided a fair playing field
in competing for clients.
5. Support for responsible professionals
Codes give positive support to
professionals seeking to act ethically.
– A publicly proclaimed code allows an
engineer, under pressure to act unethically, to
say, “I am bound by the code of ethics of my
profession, which states that …”
– This by itself gives engineers some group
backing in taking stands on moral issues.
6. Education and mutual understanding
Codes can be used by professional
societies and in the classroom to prompt
discussion and reflection on moral issues.
– Widely circulated and officially approved by
professional societies, codes encourage a
shared understanding among professionals,
the public, and government organizations
about the moral responsibilities of engineers.
7. Deterrence and discipline
Codes can also serve as the formal basis
for investigating unethical conduct.
– Where such investigation is possible, a
deterrent for immoral behavior is thereby
provided.
– Such an investigation generally requires
paralegal proceedings designed to get at the
truth about a given charge without violating the
personal rights of those being investigated.
8. Contributing to a profession’s image
Codes can present a positive image to the
public of an ethically committed profession.
– Where warranted, the image can help engineers
more effectively serve the public.
– It can also win greater powers of self-regulation
for the profession itself, while lessening the
demand for more government regulation.
– The reputation of a profession, like the reputation
of an individual professional or a corporation, is
esential in sustaining the trust of the public.
Abuse of Codes
• When codes are not taken seriously within
a profession, they amount to a kind of
window dressing that ultimately increases
public cynicism about the profession.
• Worse, codes occasionally stifle healthy
criticism, debate or dissent within the
profession and are abused in other ways.
Abuse of Codes
The best way to increase public trust of
the engineering professions is by
encouraging and helping engineers to
speak freely and responsibly about public
safety and well-being.
– This includes a tolerance for criticisms of the
codes themselves, rather than allowing codes
to become sacred documents that have to be
accepted uncritically.
Limitations of Codes
1. Codes are no substitute for individual
responsibility in grappling with concrete
dilemmas.
 Most codes are restricted to general wording
and may contain substantial areas of
vagueness.
2. Uncertainties can arise when different
entries in codes come into conflict with
each other.
 Codes usually provide little guidance as to
which entry should have priority in those
cases.
 For example, tensions arise between stated
responsibilities to employers and to the
wider public.
3. Impression of relativity and variability
 The existence of separate codes for different
professional engineering societies can give
members the feeling that ethical conduct is
more relative and variable than it actually is.
4. Flaw by omission and commission
 Despite their authority in guiding
professional conduct, codes are not always
the complete and final word.
 Codes can be flawed by both omission and
commission.
 For example, until recently, most codes omitted
explicit mention of responsibilities concerning the
environment.
 Formerly, as an example of commission,
engineering codes banned competitive bidding.
Some people believe that professional
ethics is simply the set of conventions
embraced by members of a profession,
as expressed in their code.
– This brings us to the issue of ethical
relativism.
Ethical Relativism
Ethical relativism (or ethical
conventionalism) says that moral values
are entirely relative to and reducible to
customs – to the conventions, laws, and
norms of the group to which one belongs.
– What is right is simply what conforms to
custom, and it is right solely because it
conforms to customs.
Ethical Relativism
Ethical relativism (or ethical
conventionalism) says that moral values
are entirely relative to and reducible to
customs – to the conventions, laws, and
norms of the group to which one belongs.
– We can never say an act is objectively right or
obligatory without qualification, but only that it
is right for members of a given group because
it is required by their customs.
Problems with Ethical Relativism
There are problems with ethical relativism,
whether we are talking about conventions
of a profession such as engineering or the
conventions of society in its entirety.
1. By viewing customs as self-certifying, ethical
relativism rules out the possibility of
critiquing the customs from a wider moral
framework.
 For example, it leaves us without a basis for
criticizing genocide, the oppression of women
and minorities, child abuse, torture, and reckless
disregard for the environment, when these
things are the customs of another culture.
2. Ethical relativism also seems to allow any
group of individuals to form its own society
with its own conventions, perhaps ones that
common sense tells us are immoral.
 An engineer might be a member of one or more
professional societies, a weapons development
corporation, and a pacifist religious tradition,
and the customs of these groups in matters of
military work might point in different directions.
Justification of Codes
Despite the limitations, professional
engineering code of ethics are justifiable.
– A code specifies the (officially endorsed)
“customs” of the professional “society” that writes
and promulgates it as incumbent on all members
of a profession (or at least members of a
professional society).
– When these values are specified as
responsibilities, they constitute role
responsibilities – that is, obligations connected
with a particular social role as a professional.
In Summary
• To conclude, any set of conventions, whether
code of ethics or actual conduct, should be
open to scrutiny in light of wider values.
• At the same time, professional codes should
be taken very seriously (and be open to
revision if needed).
– The codes express the good judgment of many
concerned individuals, the collective wisdom of a
profession at a given time.
Reference
The information contained in this

Powerpoint lecture is excerpted and derived
from:
1) Introduction to Engineering Ethics, 2nd Edition
(2009), by Roland Schinzinger and Mike Martin.
2) http://www.merriam-webster.com

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