Ethicality in Engineering

Many people don’t realize the importance of ethicality in engineering. Being ethical essentially means that a professional follows a widely accepted moral norm whereas morality pertains to each individual’s morality and beliefs. For this reason, engineering companies and classes often have entire learning sections dedicated to engineering ethics. My first engineering class was all about ethicality, and this may seem silly, but there is a lot more to it than one might think.

Ethics is an important substitution for morals in the engineering field for a number of reasons. Likely the most prominent reason is because of an engineer’s civil service. All I mean by civil service is that engineers serve civilians and real people. Hundreds of thousands of them. That means that an engineer can not be selfish or they may end up hurting many people.

In addition, you just really oughtn’t be a jerk to anyone. Ethics are about fairness and making the workplace as stress free as possible.

In theory it isn’t a difficult concept and most of it is common sense anyway; you just have to remember main tidbits about it.

Some general parts of the code of ethics I learned about in my class include:

Not stealing ideas

Full confidentiality of projects unless given special permission

Respecting others in the workplace

Respecting other’s ideas

Those are really the main points. As simple a concept as ethics are, they are so important not only in the engineering workplace, but any workplace and real life as a whole.

Corinna Carter

Mechanical Engineering