Week 2 — Central Professional Responsibilities of Engineers

Confidentiality is a well-established principle across professions — in medicine (doctor–patient), in law (attorney–client privilege), and equally in engineering. Most engineering codes of ethics explicitly include a confidentiality clause.

What types of information must be kept confidential?

Key criterion for deciding what is confidential

Non-Disclosure Agreement (NDA)

Engineers today are required to sign an NDA (Non-Disclosure Agreement) — a legal contract that binds them from sharing any proprietary information with outsiders. Government and defence organisations have even more stringent secrecy rules due to national security concerns.

Confidentiality when changing jobs

The responsibility does not end when an employee leaves. Former employees are barred indefinitely from revealing trade secrets unless the employer gives explicit consent. This shows that professional integrity involves more than loyalty to one's present employer.

Justifications for confidentiality

Confidentiality and Management Policies

Employers sometimes use employment contracts to restrict future employment (geography, time, type of work). However, courts often do not enforce these as they threaten individuals' right to pursue careers freely. Better approaches include portable pension plans, post-employment consulting fees conditional on not joining direct competitors, and — most importantly — fostering a culture of professional responsibility.

Three Types of Conflict of Interest

Common situations that create conflict of interest

How to avoid conflict of interest

• Follow the guidance of your company's policy on conflicts of interest.
• Seek opinion from your manager or trusted co-workers.
• Use your own ethical judgment to assess whether the situation is appropriate.

Engineers are traditionally restricted from pure competitive bidding (i.e. competing purely on price) for the following reasons:

• It seems undignified for a profession that has the potential to impact so many lives.
• Making price the sole determining factor incentivises engineers to cut corners on design quality.
• This would ultimately undermine engineers' fundamental duty to protect the safety and welfare of the public.

Two types of whistleblowing

The Four-Point Rule — When is whistleblowing justified?

• Need: Whistleblowing is genuinely required to prevent or avoid prospective harm — it is not a trivial matter.
• Proximity: You have first-hand knowledge; the events are happening close enough to you that they can be detected or properly evaluated.
• Capability: You have a reasonable chance of actually stopping the harmful activity through your disclosure.
• Last Resort: You have already tried all internal channels and been ignored; this is the only option left.

Preventing Whistleblowing (Employer's Perspective)

The best approach is to create an environment where the need to blow the whistle never arises:

Engineering codes of ethics focus primarily on responsibilities. However, engineers also possess several categories of moral rights:

Right of Professional Conscience

Right of Conscientious Refusal

The right to refuse to engage in behaviour that one views as unethical — and to refuse solely because of that ethical judgment. This is a second-order right that arises because professional obligations and employment obligations can sometimes conflict. There are two categories:

Right of Recognition

Engineers have a right to professional recognition for their work and accomplishments — both fair monetary remuneration and non-monetary forms of recognition. Underpayment leads engineers to focus on financial worries (or moonlighting) rather than their professional duties.

Privacy Rights and Equal Opportunity

• Privacy Right: The right to a private life outside work. Employers searching an employee's desk without permission — even on suspicion of wrongdoing — challenges this right.
• Prevention of Sexual Harassment: Two forms — quid pro quo (conditioning employment benefits on sexual favours) and hostile work environment (lewd remarks, inappropriate contact, etc.). Both are completely unacceptable.
• Non-discrimination: One's sex, race, skin colour, age, political or religious outlook must never affect how they are perceived or treated at work.

Defining features

Caroline Whitbeck argued that engineering design is a model for resolving moral problems — just as design problems have multiple acceptable solutions with different trade-offs, so do ethical dilemmas. Four ethical theories are used to navigate moral problems:

Ethical Dilemmas

Ethical dilemmas are situations in which moral reasons conflict, or in which applications of moral values are unclear. They arise because moral values are many, varied, and sometimes in competition. Key insight: most moral choices are not dilemmas — dilemmas are the hardest subset of moral decisions.