Ethical responsibilities of engineers

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). 

David Parnas believed that, for technical reasons, SDI could never he known in advance to be trustworthy. He also believed that pursuing SDI would likely ignite a new arms race and thereby pose an increased risk to international security. Given these beliefs, the actions David Parnas took in connection with his membership on the SDIO Panel on Computing in Support of Battle Management mark him as a researcher whose engineering work was fully consistent with the fundamental ethical responsibilities of engineers. 

DeGeorge, Richard T. (1981). Ethical Responsibilities of Engineers in Large Organizations The Pinto Case, Business and Professional Ethics Journal, Vol. 1, no. 1, pp. 1-14, http //www.jstor.org/stable/27799725... 

The ethical responsibilities of engineers are also governed by professional societies and licensing boards. Many state licensing boards now require 15 h per year of continuing education for licensed professional engineers, and some mandate that ethics be included. 

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