What does the NSPE code tell us about this situation?
There are some specifi cs of these two codes that are worth noting here. The IEEE code doesn’t mention a duty to one’s employer. However, the IEEE code does explicitly mention a duty to protect the environment. The NSPE code has a preamble that succinctly presents the duties of the engineer before going on to the more explicit discussions of the rest of the code. Like most codes of ethics, the NSPE code does mention the engineer’s duty to his or her employer in Section I.4, where it states that engineers shall “[a]ct . . . for each employer . . . as faithful agents or trustees.”
2.3.5 Resolving Internal Confl icts in Codes One objection to codes of ethics is the internal confl icts that can exist within them, with no instructions on how to resolve these confl icts. An example of this problem would be a situation in which an employer asks or even orders an engineer to
Chapter 2 Professionalism and Codes of Ethics 27
implement a design that the engineer feels will be unsafe. It is made clear that the engineer’s job is at stake if he doesn’t do as instructed. What does the NSPE code tell us about this situation?
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