Engineers ethical responsibilities

Keywords Applied ethics Curriculum Engineering design Engineering ethics Responsibility Technological innovations... 

The Ethically Responsible Engineer Concepts and Cases for Students and Professionals, First Edition. Robert McGinn. 2015 The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc. Published 2015 by John Wiley Sons, Inc. 

Subsequent chapters identify the kinds of ethical issues raised in the cases, the kinds of factors that helped engender them, and noteworthy ideas and lessons extractable from the case studies. I then survey some resources and options that might be useful to those who care about practicing engineering in an ethically responsible way. 

In short, because of a number of transformative sociotechnical developments in the engineering profession in the United States over the last 125-150 years, engineers today are more likely than ever to find themselves faced with challenging ethical issues at work. That makes it all the more important that they be equipped to address such issues in an ethically responsible manner. 

Instead of limiting the engineer s ethical responsibility to do no harm to her/his patients, I contend that the engineer has the broader ethical responsibility to combat harm that might be caused to others by her/bis professional work (and/or by the work of others in which s/he is involved or by work about which s/he is technically knowledgeable). 

What combating harm involves must, of course, be made explicit. The overarching ethical responsibility to combat harm can be unpacked into three Fundamental Ethical Responsibilities of Engineers (henceforth FEREs). 

Engineers employed by an organization or engaged by a client have an additional fundamental ethical responsibility ... 

EEREl is the engineer s ethical responsibility to not cause harm or create an unreasonable risk of harm to others or to public welfare or the public interest through her/his work. More precisely, engineers have an ethical responsibility to not do an5dhing in their work that will cause or contribute to causing harm, or that will create or contribute to creating an unreasonable risk of harm, to parties affected or likely to be affected by that work. 

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