Perspectives of Engineers on Ethical Dilemmas in the Workplace

The research questions explored in this study were: To what extent do engineers feel that they are confronted with ethical dilemmas at work? Did ethical dilemmas contribute to changing jobs or careers? Did these issues vary between types of engineering jobs, engineering disciplines, or gender? Survey responses were received from 504 individuals and represented 719 different jobs. For 31% of the jobs, individuals indicated that they never felt that they had been confronted with an ethical or moral dilemma regarding how their work impacted people, society, and/or the environment. This may truly reflect a lack of these circumstances, or may indicate that some individuals are not adept at recognizing such issues. For 34% of the jobs, ethical/moral dilemmas were encountered infrequently and were not of significant personal concern, compared to ethical/moral dilemmas encountered infrequently but of significant personal concern in 16% of the cases. Smaller percentages of the jobs were reported to have frequent ethical dilemmas that were and were not of significant personal concern; 9% and 8%, respectively. Finally, 2% indicated that the moral/ethical dilemma was the primary reason that they had left their job. These cases might reflect that the individual was in moral distress, feeling powerless to pursue what they believed to be an ethical course of action. The frequency and degree of concern of ethical dilemmas encountered varied between job sectors and engineering disciplines, but not by gender. Informing students about the likelihood of encountering ethical dilemmas might better prepare them for these challenges. Background Engineering ethics in the workplace are of critical importance. Recently the news has been rife with examples of engineering problems and failures – faulty airbags, the Volkswagen emissions “defeat device” to evade environmental regulations, construction of a new Veterans Affairs Hospital in Colorado wildly mismanaged, issues with the new San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge, the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, the Hurricane Katrina disaster in New Orleans. These cases all include elements related to engineering ethical issues. It is unclear that the engineers in these cases had sufficient education to prepare them to act for the best interest of society and the environment. One engineering educator has noted: A traditional education does little to prepare you for morally courageous action... our obligation as individuals to speak out and correct wrong-doing and injustices... We’ve created an entire class of people to whom we outsource the need to speak out... [but] if you are part of that team, however small and unsuspecting your role, and you have a conscience, you bear partial responsibility for that outcome. With increasing specialization and complexity, the only truly effective police are those that have the expertise and those that are working on the inside.... You can’t legislate morality. (Marc Edwards) Professionally licensed engineers in the U.S. are bound by a Code of Ethics, and can lose their license to practice engineering for ethical violations. However, a significant percentage of engineers do not become professionally licensed. Regardless, students graduating from ABETaccredited engineering, engineering technology and computing programs must have an understanding of professional and ethical issues. But the depth and breadth of this knowledge is poorly defined, proper assessment is difficult, and most assessments focus predominately on microethical issues. Macroethical issues such as social responsibility, the impact of engineering on society, and aspirational ethics to promote human well-being are also important. Furthermore, there can be a disconnect between ‘understanding’ and ‘action’, highlighted by the American Society of Civil Engineers: “programs could have students achieve an “understanding” of [ethics]... through seminars or lectures. Seminars or lectures may be ineffective in addressing ethical decision-making and, more importantly, influencing ethical and professional behavior. In fact, professional engineers themselves have reported their ethics education as undergraduates did little to prepare them for the ethical realities they face in their profession.” p. 25-26 There is limited information on the extent to which engineers feel that they encounter ethical dilemmas in the workplace. In a 1997 survey of 100 practicing engineers, 70% of the individuals indicated that yes, they had been faced with an ethical issue in the course of their engineering practice. In addition, 19.2% indicated that an employer had done something to try to deter them from acting in alignment with their perceived ethical and social responsibility (or to penalize them after they acted). In contrast, 34% indicated they had been encouraged to act as obligated on ethical or social responsibility grounds. It is unclear if the practicing engineers who participated in this study considered both microethical and macroethical issues when responding. In a study by Harding et al. of engineering students with work experience, the unethical context most frequently noted as temptations in the workplace were improper use of company resources, followed by falsifying records, ignoring product quality problems, and lying about work quality. Less than 20% of the students noted being tempted to ignore safety problems, accept improper gifts from vendors, or take credit for others’ work. These issues all seem to be primarily microethical concerns. The cited reasons for being tempted toward unethical workplace behavior were most often associated with the notion that “everyone does it”, followed by “I wanted to seem better than I was” and “someone told me to do it”. 10 Annual surveys were conducted at a large public university in 2012 to 2014 of alumni who had graduated with their engineering bachelor’s degree 3 to 5 years prior. As one among many questions on a long survey, individuals were asked how often they were faced with ethical or moral decisions in their line of work. The responses from the 222 alumni were: 45% rarely, 23% monthly, 17% weekly, and 15% daily (unpublished data). It is unclear if alumni interpreted this question to include both microethical issues and societal impact concerns. There appeared to be weak differences between majors, with the highest frequency of ethical or moral issues among civil and chemical engineering majors (average 2.3-2.4, between monthly and weekly); moderate among environmental, aerospace, architectural, and mechanical engineering alumni (average 2.02.1, approximately monthly); and lowest among electrical and computer engineers (average 1.7, between rarely and monthly). In addition, 21% of the alumni indicated that their undergraduate experience did not at all/not very well prepare them to recognize and deal with unethical behavior. One might expect that different engineering disciplines and sectors are more likely to encounter various ethical dilemmas. For example, bioethics relates primarily to biomedical engineering. Tow and Loosemore noted that the construction industry has been branded “more corrupt than any other sector of the international economy.” 122 The issues identified included extrinsic reward of unethical behavior, competition, unrealistic profit goals, ignoring conflicts of interest, and an absence of reward systems for those who act ethically. In a similar study of ethics in the construction industry, it was noted that “all respondents had witnessed or experienced some degree of unethical conduct, in the form of unfair conduct, negligence, conflict of interest, collusive tendering, fraud, confidentiality and propriety breach, bribery and violation of environmental ethics.” 117 Disciplines such as civil and architectural engineering are more likely to interact with the construction industry than other branches of engineering, potentially increasing their temptations for unethical behavior. A focus on workplace ethics is not unique to engineering. Kaas discusses the importance of using the affective domain of Bloom’s taxonomy for designing ethics instruction for accounting students, in contrast to the approach currently used which tends to focus on microethical issues. In medicine some have bemoaned the “lack of adequate schooling in the values, ethics, and culture of caring.” p. 321 Studies in nursing have determined that moral distress can cause nurses to leave their jobs and/or the profession. Moral distress was characterized as a condition where one felt that they were powerless to pursue what they perceived to be an ethically correct action. Moral distress has also been identified in all types of healthcare professions and veterinary students. Gender differences in moral distress among critical care nurses were found. No previous studies on moral distress among engineers were identified, but this idea could be relevant. As more students are attracted to engineering with goals of helping others, as embodied in messages from Changing the Conversation and service activities such as Engineers Without Borders (EWB), it is important to determine if these individuals find a place for their values within the engineering profession. A specific impetus for this research grew out of a series of interviews with 19 alumni of engineering service programs; these interviews were conducted in spring 2013 (unpublished). Two interviewees noted ethical dilemmas that confronted them as environmental/civil engineers working in consulting. In one case, the ethical dilemmas caused him to leave engineering entirely for a career in family therapy. This quote from his interview illustrates the issue: ...there's a fundamental incompatibility that's being for profit and being for the public good... and so there were a few situations where I was asked to do things that I thought were unethical, and I kind of asked around to other people in the field who had been in similar situations w