Learning to listen: An ethnographic approach to engineering ethics education

Abstract

On a daily basis, the 3.5 million engineers and scientists working in the United States make complicated and critical decisions that ultimately affect the public - their oftenunseen client whose health and welfare they are expected to hold paramount. In response to an array of professional, organizational, financial, and political pressures, engineers' and scientists' obligation to protect the wellbeing of individuals they might never meet can be difficult. Indeed, it was at least in part the failure to treat the public's health and welfare as the overriding concern in a series of catastrophic events during the 20th century (e.g., the DC-10 crash in 1974, the Ford Pinto case in 1981, the Union Carbide explosion in Bhopal in 1984) that drew public attention to the ethical duties of engineers and scientists, propelled vigorous writing of professional codes of conduct, and established the academic discipline of engineering ethics.1-2 As a growing number of documented real-world cases suggests, engineers and scientists who become alienated from their public clients, are also much more vulnerable to self-interest, self-delusion, and institutional pressures that can contribute to unethical conduct and suboptimal professional decisions.3-8. © American Society for Engineering Education, 2013.