17.3 Obligations may start with the client...

Question 1

What do we owe our clients or employers as engineers or designers?

Answer 1

As designers or engineers, we owe our client or employer a professional effort at solving a design problem, by which we mean being technically competent, conscientious, and thorough.

Question 2

When should engineers or designers undertake technical tasks?

Answer 2

Engineers and designers should undertake technical tasks only if properly “qualified by training or experience”.

Question 3

How do engineers and designers approach conflicts of interest in applying a professional effort?

Answer 3

Engineers and designers owe it to their employers to avoid any conflicts of interest and to disclose any that may exist?

Question 4

How do designers or engineers approach integrity in applying a professional effort?

Answer 4

Engineers should serve their employers by being “honest and impartial” and by “serving with fidelity…”

Question 5

What does it mean to serve with “fidelity”?

Answer 5

One implication from the ASCE code of ethics is that we should be loyal to our employer or our client.

Question 6

What are some synonyms for fidelity?

Answer 6

Synonyms for fidelity include:

• Constancy
• Fealty
• Allegiance
• Loyalty

Question 7

What is suggested by the implication from the ASCE code of ethics that we should be loyal to our employer or our client?

Answer 7

The implication from the ASCE code of ethics that we should be loyal to our employer or client suggests that/to:

• one of our obligations is to look out for the best interests of our client or employer
• maintain a clear picture of the best interests of our client or employer as we do our design work

Question 8

Describe loyalty.

Answer 8

Loyalty is not a simple, one-dimensional attribute.

Clients and companies earn the loyalty of their consultants and staffs in at least two ways.

Question 9

What is meant by agency-loyalty?

Answer 9

Agency-loyalty derives from the nature of any contracts:

• between the designer and her client
  
  • e.g., “work for hire”
• OR between the designer and her employer
  
  • e.g., a “hired worker”

Question 10

What makes agency-loyalty obligatory? For whom is agency loyalty obligatory?

Answer 10

As it is dictated by contract, agency-loyalty is clearly obligatory for the designer.

Question 11

What provides a reason to maintain a “design notebook”?

Answer 11

Agency-loyalty provides one reason to maintain a “design notebook” to document design work.

Question 12

Why is keeping a record in a design record considered good design practice?

Answer 12

Keeping design practice is good design practice because it is very useful for recapitulating our thinking as we move through different stages of the design process and for real-time tracking.

Question 13

What provides a legal basis for documenting how new, patentable ideas were developed?

Answer 13

The documentation of a dated design notebook:

• provides a legal basis for documenting how new, patentable ideas were developed
• is essential to an employer or client if a patent application is in any way challenged.

Question 14

Which type of loyalty is obviously obligatory? Which type of loyalty is sometimes view as optional?

Answer 14

As it is dictated by contract, agency-loyalty is clearly obligatory for the designer.

Identification-loyalty is more likely to be seen as optional.

Question 15

Describe identification-loyalty.

Answer 15

Identification-loyalty stems from the engineer identifying with the client or company because she admires its goals or sees its behavior as mirroring her own values.

To the extent that identification-loyalty is optional, it will be earned by clients and companies only if they reciprocate by demonstrating loyalty to their own staff designers.

Question 16

What provides fertile ground for clashes of obligations?

Answer 16

Since identification-loyalty is optional, it provides fertile ground for clashes of obligations.

Question 17

Why does the optional nature of identification loyalty provide fertile ground for clashes of obligations?

Answer 17

Since identification-loyalty is optional, it provides fertile ground for clashes of obligations because other loyalties have the space to make themselves felt here.

Question 18

To what do modern codes of ethics normally articulate some form of obligation?

Answer 18

Modern codes of ethics normally articulate some form of obligation to the health and welfare of the public.

Question 19

What are some examples of a way that modern codes of ethics normally articulate some form of obligation to the health and welfare of the public?

Answer 19

• The ASCE code of ethics suggests that civil engineers work toward enhancing both human welfare and the environment, and that they “shall hold paramount the safety, health, and welfare of the public.
• ” Similarly, the IEEE code suggests that its members commit to “making engineering decisions consistent with the safety, health and welfare of the public ….”

These are clear calls to engineers to identify other loyalties to which they should feel allegiance.

Question 20

What were the likely causes of whistleblowing in the NASA challenger and the Air Force GSA cargo plane?

Answer 20

There is little doubt that it was just such divided loyalties that emerged in landmark cases of whistleblowing.

Question 21

What typically emerges for engineers as toxic waste sites are cleaned up under the Super Fund program of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)?

Answer 21

Conflicting loyalties emerge for engineers as toxic waste sites are cleaned up under the Super Fund program of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).

Question 22

How do conflicting loyalties affect ethical practices?

Answer 22

In many instances, employees felt that they needed to look out for their own companies:

• sometimes because they felt the companies should not be penalized for doing what was once legal
• other times because they were pressured to do so by peers and bosses and by the possible loss of their jobs

Question 23

What is the danger of prioritizing loyalties to their companies at all costs?

Answer 23

There are cases in which engineers were apparently willing, or at least able, to rank their loyalties to their companies first, to the point where:

• falsified emission test data were reported to the government (by engineers and managers at the Ford Motor Company)
• parts known to be faulty were delivered to the Air Force (by engineers and managers at the B. F. Goodrich Company).

Question 24

How can acts of apparent disloyalty to a company or organization sometimes be viewed?

Answer 24

An apparent disloyalty to a company or an organization may sometimes be, in a longer term, an act of greater, successfully merged loyalties.

Question 25

What did Ford Pinto engineers request prior to putting the car on the market?

Answer 25

When the Ford Pinto was initially being designed, for example, some of its engineers wanted to perform crash tests that were not then called for in the relevant U.S. Department of Transportation regulations.

Question 26

What was Ford management’s response to Ford Pinto engineers wanted to perform crash tests that were not then called for in the relevant U.S. Department of Transportation regulations?

Answer 26

The managers charged with developing the Pinto felt that such tests could not benefit the program and, in fact, might only prove to be a burden. Why run a test that is not required, only to risk failing that test?

Question 27

How were designers of the Ford Pinto who proposed crash tested viewed by Ford and by the Pinto program?

Answer 27

The designers who proposed the tests were seen as disloyal to Ford and to the Pinto program.

Question 28

What engineering catastrophe occurred in the case of the Ford Pinto?

Answer 28

The placement of the drive train and the gas tank resulted in the following for Ford:

• fiery crashes
• lives lost
• major public relations issues
• financial headaches

Question 29

What could be said about the engineers who proposed crash testing of the Ford Pinto?

Answer 29

Clearly, Ford would have been better off, in the long run, to have conducted the tests, so the engineers who proposed them could be said to have been looking out for the company’s long-term interests.

Question 30

Do ethical issues arise from a single obligation or many obligations?

Answer 30

Ethical issues do not arise from a single obligation. Ethical issues arise from the conflict of many obligations and interests.

Question 31

What would be the result of ethical issues being easily categorized as single-obligation issues?

Answer 31

Were issues so easily categorized, choices would vanish and ethical conflicts would not be a problem.

Question 32

What testifies to the reality of conflicting obligations and at the same time provides guidance to mediating among those conflicts?

Answer 32

The very existence of professional codes of ethics both testifies to the reality of conflicting obligations and at the same time provides guidance to mediating among those conflicts.