Ethics in professional practice
Almost all professional ethics violations are legal until someone gets hurt. Codes exist so that the decision is made beforehand.
01Ethics, morality and deontology
Morality is the set of convictions of a person or a community about what is right and what is wrong. Ethics is the reflection on those convictions: why something is right, how to decide when two duties collide. Professional deontology is ethics applied to a profession, written into concrete rules that a professional community gives itself and that a disciplinary tribunal can enforce.
The Engineering and Society page on the profession and ethics introduced the concepts and the gender perspective. Here we work with the codes in force and with cases.
02Codes of ethics
In national jurisdiction, the code of ethics for surveying, architecture and engineering was approved by Decree 1099/84 and is applied by professional councils such as COPITEC. Each provincial association has its own, with very similar content. Internationally, the IEEE code is the reference for the field, and it begins with the same principle as all of them: putting the safety, health and welfare of the public first.
| Duties to… | Examples |
|---|---|
| Society | Not signing work that puts people or the environment at risk; warning the authority when a danger is not corrected |
| The profession | Not lending your signature; not practicing outside your own competence; keeping up to date |
| Colleagues | Not displacing another professional by offering lower fees; not replacing them on a job without notifying them; not criticizing them without grounds |
| The client or employer | Loyalty, professional secrecy, candidly reporting the risks and the limits of the work, avoiding conflicts of interest |
Breaches are judged before the ethics or disciplinary tribunal of the council or association, with penalties ranging from a warning to suspension or revocation of the license.
03Conflict of interest
A conflict of interest exists when a personal interest can influence, or appear to influence, the professional judgment that others expect to be impartial. The engineer who writes the specification for a tender and is a partner of one of the bidders; the one who recommends a supplier that pays them a commission; the expert witness who has a relationship with one of the parties. The general rule is simple: disclose it and, if it compromises impartiality, step aside. Hiding it turns an awkward situation into a breach.
04Cases where the legal and the ethical do not coincide
Most of the serious ethical failures in the history of engineering were not illegal at the time they were decided. Some cases studied around the world:
| Case | What happened | The lesson |
|---|---|---|
| Therac-25 (1985-1987) | A radiotherapy machine with software errors delivered lethal overdoses; hardware safeguards had been removed in reliance on the software | Safety software needs the same review as hardware, and failure reports must be investigated |
| Challenger (1986) | The engineers at the rocket manufacturer warned that the seals failed in cold weather; the decision to launch was made by management | The engineer has to stand by their technical judgment under pressure from the organization |
| Volkswagen emissions (2015) | Software detected homologation tests and changed how the engine ran | Cheating on a test is a design decision, and someone writes it |
Three situations of the kind that come up in the professional life of an electronic engineer. You choose a response and the analysis appears according to the codes of ethics: there is not always a perfect option, but there are options that a disciplinary tribunal would judge.
05Professional secrecy
What a professional learns through their work —a client’s design, their processes, their failures— is confidential. Revealing it without just cause is an ethical breach and can be a crime (Article 156 of the Código Penal, the Criminal Code). Secrecy yields to a greater duty: if keeping it puts people’s lives or safety at risk, the duty to the public prevails.
06Where it shows up in electronics
| Situation | The duty at stake |
|---|---|
| A client asks you to skip an electromagnetic compatibility test to meet a deadline | To the public and to the truth of what is being certified |
| Recommending the equipment brand you are a distributor of | Disclosing the conflict of interest |
| Reusing in a new project the firmware developed for another client | Secrecy and intellectual property |
| Signing an installation done by someone else without having inspected it | Not lending your signature |
07Activities
Obtain the code of ethics of the association or council of your jurisdiction and compare it with the IEEE’s: which duties do they share and which appear in only one.
Read a public report on the Therac-25 case and list the engineering decisions that, had they been made differently, would have prevented the accidents.
Write a realistic ethical dilemma from the field of electronics with three courses of action and analyze them against the code of ethics.
08Common mistakes
- Believing that what is legal is sufficient. Many serious ethical breaches were legal.
- Staying silent about a conflict of interest hoping it goes unnoticed. Disclosing it almost always solves it; hiding it makes it worse.
- Lending your signature to an acquaintance. It is one of the breaches that disciplinary tribunals penalize most.
- Thinking that responsibility lies with the company. The ethical duty is personal.
09Self-assessment
What is professional deontology?
Ethics applied to a profession, written into concrete rules that a disciplinary tribunal can enforce.
What principle heads the engineering codes of ethics?
Putting the safety, health and welfare of the public first.
What should you do in the face of a conflict of interest?
Disclose it and, if it compromises impartiality, step aside.
When does professional secrecy yield?
When keeping it puts people’s lives or safety at risk.
10Further reading
- Charles E. Harris, Michael S. Pritchard, Michael J. Rabins and others. Engineering Ethics: Concepts and Cases. Cengage. The reference text on engineering ethics, with methods for analyzing cases.
- Nancy G. Leveson and Clark S. Turner. An Investigation of the Therac-25 Accidents. IEEE Computer, 1993. The classic analysis of the case, essential reading for anyone who designs equipment with software.
- IEEE. IEEE Code of Ethics. IEEE Policies, Section 7.8. The code of the field, brief and in force.