THE FUNDAMENTAL ETHICAL RESPONSIBILITIES OF ENGINEERS

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  

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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. 

The Westway case illustrates that powerful political-economic pressures to proceed with a large-scale civil and environmental engineering project can induce technical professionals to engage in a range of deceptive practices that jeopardize public welfare and violate their fundamental ethical responsibilities. 

The preceding codes have many common elements, the most important of which is protection of public safety, health, and welfare. For example. Canon 1 in the NSPE code, after the words Engineers, in fulfillment of their professional duties, shall lists, as Fundamental Canon 1, Hold paramount the safety, health, and welfare of the public. All of the other engineering society codes presented above include responsibility for safety, health, and welfare of the public in their first listed provision. Holding paramount protection of public safety, health, and welfare is the first consideration in the vast majority of engineering codes of ethics. 

Engineering problem solving within an ethical framework, legul responsibilities, and professional registration are developed. Ethics case studies and the content of the Fundamentals of Engineering (FE) and Professional Engineering (PE) examinations are included. 

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