Why Study Engineering Ethics

The dilemma faced by the design engineers who worked on the Pinto was to balance the safety of the people who would be riding in the car against the need to produce the Pinto at a price that would be competitive in the market. They had to attempt to balance their duty to the public against their duty to their employer. Ultimately, the attempt by Ford to save a few dollars in manufacturing costs led to the expenditure of millions of dollars in defending lawsuits and payments to vic- tims. Of course, there were also uncountable costs in lost sales due to bad public- ity and a public perception that Ford did not engineer its products to be safe.

1.1 BACKGROUND IDEAS The Pinto case is just one example of the ethical problems faced by engineers in the course of their professional practice. Ethical cases can go far beyond issues of pub- lic safety and may involve bribery, fraud, environmental protection, fairness, hon- esty in research and testing, and confl icts of interest. During their undergraduate education, engineers receive training in basic and engineering sciences, problem- solving methodology, and engineering design, but generally receive little training in business practices, safety, and ethics.

This problem has been partially corrected, as many engineering education programs now have courses in what is called engineering ethics. Indeed, the Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology (ABET), the body responsi- ble for accrediting undergraduate engineering programs in the United States, has mandated that ethics topics be incorporated into undergraduate engineering cur- ricula. The purpose of this book is to provide a text and a resource for the study of engineering ethics and to help future engineers be prepared for confronting and resolving ethical dilemmas, such as the design of an unsafe product like the Pinto, that they might encounter during their professional careers.

A good place to start a discussion of ethics in engineering is with defi nitions of ethics and engineering ethics. Ethics is the study of the characteristics of morals. Ethics also deals with the moral choices that are made by each person in his or her relationship with other persons. As engineers, we are concerned with ethics because these defi nitions apply to all of the choices an individual makes in life, including those made while practicing engineering.

For our purposes, the defi nition of ethics can be narrowed a little. Engineering ethics is the rules and standards governing the conduct of engineers in their role as professionals. Engineering ethics encompasses the more general defi nition of eth- ics, but applies it more specifi cally to situations involving engineers in their profes- sional lives. Thus, engineering ethics is a body of philosophy indicating the ways that engineers should conduct themselves in their professional capacity.