Engineering Ethics : Chapter 6

Professional Responsibilities

By Yazan Osama

Objectives• Professional Responsibilities

- Confidentiality and proprietary information

- Conflict of interest

Confidentiality and Proprietary Information

• Confidentiality : Is to keep certain information secret or confidential, as per what is mentioned in the codes of ethics

• *Proprietary Information :– Is sensitive information that is owned by a company and

which gives the company certain competitive advantages. – Is critical assets to the success of most businesses.

*http://definitions.uslegal.com/p/proprietary-information

• Why must some engineering information be kept confidential?

Because most information about how the business run, its products and suppliers, can directly affects the company’s ability to compete in the market place

• What types of information should be kept confidential?

A- Obvious information includes test results and data, information about upcoming or pre-released products, and designs or formulas for products.

B- Non-obvious information includes business information such as number of employees, business strategies, production costs, production yields and identity of suppliers.

Confidentiality Conditions

1. Signed agreements - What information to keep ? - For how long ? - The rights of the employer ! - My job advancement !

2. What A BALANCE ? - the COMPETING NEEDS the ENGINEERS RIGHTS

Conflict of Interest*Definition : A situation in which a person has a private or

personal interest sufficient to appear to influence the objective exercise of his or her official duties as a public official, an employee, or a professional.

• Types of conflict of interest

Actual conflicts

Potentialconflicts

Appearance of a conflict

Source: Chris MacDonald, Michael McDonald, and Wayne Norman, “Charitable Conflicts of Interest”, Journal of Business Ethics 39:1-2, 67-74, August 2002. (p.68

Conflicts of Interest Management • Follow company guidance and policy

• Consult your manager or ask a coworker

• Consult the professional ethics

Professional Rights

By: Ahmad Hmidan

Professional Rights

• As we mentioned before the word ( Rights ) is defined as : are shared norms of moralitiesand as engineers have responsibilities, also they have rights.

Those rights can be divided into a lot of sections.

Dependencies of Rights

• There are rights the individuals have regardless of professional statuses like:

RightTo

privacy

ParticipateIn

activities

ObjectionOf

Companypolicies

RightTo

Due process

The most fundamental right

• The right of professional conscience: involves the right to exercise professional judgment in an ethical way.

• This right includes many aspects including the (Right of Conscientious Refusal): the right to refuse to engage in an unethical behavior.

Engineers and the Defense industry

• One of the largest employers of engineers world wide is the defense industry which includes weapons.

• Weapons are designed for one purpose, TO KILL HUMAN BEINGS

• So its important for the engineer to revise himself before stepping a foot into that path.

With or against??

• Some engineers feel that its not ethical to work on weapons

• While others find it ethical.

WHISTLEBLOWING

By:Hussam al Daragma

WHISTLE BLOWING

• Whistle blowing: is the act by an employee of informing the public or higher management of unethical or illegal behavior by an employer or supervisor.

• There are many cases in using whistleblowing, like disclose government employee is waster or fraud by newspaper.

Types of Whistle blowing

Internal Whistle blowing

ExternalWhistle blowing

AnonymousWhistle blowing

AcknowledgedWhistle blowing

AnonymousWhistle blowing

AcknowledgedWhistle blowing

When should Whistle blowing be attempted?

Before you blow the whistle, you need to ask yourself these questions:

1. Do I need to blow the whistle?2. What is the proximity of my whistle blow?3. What are my capabilities?4. Am I the last resort?

Preventing Whistle blowing

• We will talk about the whistle blowing from the employers’ side of view.

• The employer should seek to minimize the need of whistle blowing as much as he can

• But how???

Preventing Whistle blowing

• There are four ways to prevent whistle blowing:

1. There must be a strong corporate ethics culture.2. There should be clear lines of communication

within the corporation.3. All employees should have meaningful access to

high-level managers in order to bring their concerns forward.

4. There should be willingness on the part of management to admit mistakes.

Case study

The BART Case The Bay Area Rapid Transit ( BART) system, it’s a system which got its genesis in late 1947, when a joint Army-Navy review board recommended the construction of a tunnel underneath San Francisco bay for high speed train service between san Francisco and Oakland.BART was to be a high- tech rail system serving many of the outlying communities along San Francisco bay

moving on, there were three engineers. They were involved in the design construction of rail beds, tunnels, bridges, etc.; the design and manufacture of the railcars; and the design and implementation of a system for controlling the trains. The problem which will be discussed is the controlling.The system is based on computers controlling the system instead of humans. But the basic problem was:

NON OF THE NEW TECHNOLOGY SYSTEMS WERE TESTED

Including any innovative engineering design, which also had components which were not tested also, and what increased the problem was that, there was no FAIL-SAFE methods, which implies that, when the system fails, the train stops, but the system was based on REDUNDANCY, which implies that if the system fails the train switches the system and components to back-ups, in order for it to keep moving.

there is a little bit to say about the BART management, as they were using the policy of being open, and they gave freedom to the employees to define what their jobs entitled and to work independently, and encounter any concerns that they had to management,, but sadly there was a very diffuse and unclear chain of command that made it difficult for employees to take their concerns to the right person.

The key players in this story were three engineers:

Roger Hjortsvang,Robert Bruder, and Max Blankenzee.

As they became concerned about the system, and that there was no testing made. The company BART, on the other hand, didn’t go after the company which was supposed to test the system, as they trusted it blindly to deliver what was promised.

In November, the three engineers sent an unsigned memo to several levels of BART management that summarized the problems, and they were suspiciously viewed by the managers.In January 1972, they contacted members of BART board of directors , indicating that their concerns were not taken seriously by lower management.