As I complain to Southwest Airlines about not being able to check in early to my flight for Sunday morning at eight twenty to go back home for thanksgiving break, I become heedless of the convenience and potential danger of technology and engineering. I’m sure it has crossed everybody’s mind that there is a possibility of being in that one airplane that happened to have the unfortunate course of events that leads to its demise and disaster. In the famous crash of the DC-10 flight 191 in 1970, I’m sure the passengers all had these same worries too. When a person’s life, money, well-being, or time falls in the hands of an engineer, ethics becomes a factor.
As a society, people will always have disagreeing views and opinions on what is acceptable and what is not. Therefore, we need to have a set of rules and regulations that are all agreed upon which everyone can refer to in times of disagreement. In the IEEE world, therefore we have the Code of Ethics. Otherwise, people could get away with cutting corners to save a few bucks and indirectly cheating others.
The way I make decisions dealing with ethical areas, it is an easy decision for me. Picking the option which is the most ethically sound just feels like the right decision to make. Some factors that can determine whether a choice is ethically sound is whether it affects anyone else and if so how. For example, if someone gives me five dollars to buy milk at the store and I know the milk they want is exactly 5 dollars, but the cheaper brand is 4, I would see that the most ethically sound choice would be to buy the milk they want. But if I bought the milk for 4 dollars, I could keep the extra dollar for myself. This is a very simplified example of the ethical decisions engineers have to make.
In my group discussion with Dr. Chu, we analyzed the Citicorp building case. In this situation, a building was being designed to be built over St. Peter’s Lutheran Church. The church was covering a large portion of where the building was to stand so the structural engineer of the building, William LeMessurier, had quite a task on his hands. When he was done designing the building to specifications of the city and the building had been built. He revisited some calculations and found that the building may not withstand some higher and diagonal winds. So he faced an ethical problem. He could leave saying that his building met specifications, or he could face the financial cost and take the necessary precautions to reinforce the building. Our group came to the agreement that the most ethically correct decision would be to reinforce the building and make it structurally sound. Which happens to be what LeMessurier did do.
The “Virtue of Ethics” are closely related to this case. Most pertinent is the Responsibility virtue. LeMessurier took a huge hit by coming clean about his error. He could have saved himself a lot of time and money by letting it go. But he took the responsibility and took all blame for his mistakes. Another is Honesty. He was truly honest about his errors. Another would be self-discipline. It takes a lot of self-discipline to go out of your way to confess when you could stay sheltered and not speak out.
Some virtues that may not be as related as the past few are charity and fidelity. It may not be considered a charity or fidelity to do what you are obligated as an engineer.
As a society, people will always have disagreeing views and opinions on what is acceptable and what is not. Therefore, we need to have a set of rules and regulations that are all agreed upon which everyone can refer to in times of disagreement. In the IEEE world, therefore we have the Code of Ethics. Otherwise, people could get away with cutting corners to save a few bucks and indirectly cheating others.
The way I make decisions dealing with ethical areas, it is an easy decision for me. Picking the option which is the most ethically sound just feels like the right decision to make. Some factors that can determine whether a choice is ethically sound is whether it affects anyone else and if so how. For example, if someone gives me five dollars to buy milk at the store and I know the milk they want is exactly 5 dollars, but the cheaper brand is 4, I would see that the most ethically sound choice would be to buy the milk they want. But if I bought the milk for 4 dollars, I could keep the extra dollar for myself. This is a very simplified example of the ethical decisions engineers have to make.
In my group discussion with Dr. Chu, we analyzed the Citicorp building case. In this situation, a building was being designed to be built over St. Peter’s Lutheran Church. The church was covering a large portion of where the building was to stand so the structural engineer of the building, William LeMessurier, had quite a task on his hands. When he was done designing the building to specifications of the city and the building had been built. He revisited some calculations and found that the building may not withstand some higher and diagonal winds. So he faced an ethical problem. He could leave saying that his building met specifications, or he could face the financial cost and take the necessary precautions to reinforce the building. Our group came to the agreement that the most ethically correct decision would be to reinforce the building and make it structurally sound. Which happens to be what LeMessurier did do.
The “Virtue of Ethics” are closely related to this case. Most pertinent is the Responsibility virtue. LeMessurier took a huge hit by coming clean about his error. He could have saved himself a lot of time and money by letting it go. But he took the responsibility and took all blame for his mistakes. Another is Honesty. He was truly honest about his errors. Another would be self-discipline. It takes a lot of self-discipline to go out of your way to confess when you could stay sheltered and not speak out.
Some virtues that may not be as related as the past few are charity and fidelity. It may not be considered a charity or fidelity to do what you are obligated as an engineer.