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Benjamin Ferreira

Tina Prouty

CprE/EE 394

April 28, 2018

Ethics Essay: Why Follow a Code?

When working in a professional engineering environment, as most of us

computer engineering students hope to do in the future, how important should it be to

follow a “Code of Ethics” in every situation? This is a question that contains many

different areas of discussion, and even though there might not be a black-or-white

answer for it, I will presently address a few of these topics. I will discuss the purpose of

following a “Code of Ethics”, how I personally make decisions in ethical situations,

ethical considerations introduced in class, and discuss a reflection on three of the six

“Virtues of Ethics”.

Personally, I believe that there are quite a few legitimate purposes for following

or having a “Code of Ethics” in a professional work environment. These codes can

describe the characteristics found in – and required of – professionals, lay down clear

obligations between the company and its employees, or even just to have ground rules

that remove areas of uncertainty in a workplace. In the engineering work environment,

there are many situations that would be resolved a lot more simply when each individual

follows the company’s code of ethics.

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If I was faced with an ethical situation, let’s say that a coworker brought up a very

legitimate-sounding, and convincing plot to me where he would supply me with a bonus

if I were to release some data in an inaccurate way, I would look at a few factors that

are involved in making my decision. First, I would refer to the IEEE Code of Ethics that

was brought up in class, and notice numbers 3 and 4, which let me know that I should

always be honest based on collected data, and to reject bribery in all its forms. I would

then look at the situation before me and see that it does not follow the IEEE Code of

Ethics. The professional’s duties in this situation would include not accepting the bribe

in any way, and also addressing the lack of proper ethics in my coworker’s request. I

would have to let him know that he is wrong in this situation, and then let a superior

know about the situation in its entirety. Following from this analysis, with my stance as

an engineer, I should feel proud that the data I have collected actually helps make a

difference in the world, and should not want to release it falsely just for personal gain. In

addition, as an upstanding professional citizen, I should have the stance that accepting

money I did not earn legally would be the wrong thing to do.

We discussed a few major ethical considerations in our lecture, such as

discrimination based on race, religion, sex, disability, age, and etc., honesty and deceit

in the workplace, and the crediting of other people’s contributions. The crediting of

other’s contributions is an ethical consideration that I have not given much thought to

until now, and hope that I can apply it to my life in the future. Although, one I would like

to delve more deeply into a discussion on would be the topic of discrimination in the

workplace. I believe that one major ethical obligation, inside and outside of a

professional environment, would be to never discriminate against others based on race,

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religion, sex, disability, age, national origin, sexual orientation, gender identity, or

gender expression. In regards to a professional action based on this obligation, an

employer should never hire one person over another based on any of these personal

attributes, and instead only based upon merit and company needs. If an employer were

to break this rule, he would be reducing the hiring process to being solely based upon

his biased opinions and on nothing that would help further the success of the company.

He would therefore be working against the good of his own company, which is highly

unprofessional and unethical. An example of this would be if a woman and a man were

both in the running for the same engineering position, and the hiring manager decided

to hire the woman based on his personal belief that there should be more women

represented in the STEM field, instead of their ability or merit. He would be working

towards the demise of his own company, against its well-being, as well as acting highly

unethical. This is an ethical consideration that I have always took to heart, and believed

in the importance of in my own professional career. In our class session, we were able

to agree on the most ethical decision in this situation, taking a firm stance against

discrimination of any form.

Taking a look at how the “Virtue of Ethics” relates to our group’s case study on

discrimination in the workplace, I can choose three of the six virtues that apply the most

in this situation. The first of the three is the virtue of integrity, which includes exercising

good judgment in your field of practice. This relates to our study on discrimination

because you must have a level of integrity that pushes you to act beyond your personal

qualms with society and realize that hiring someone must only be based on their

abilities and not their differences from others. The second virtue that relates is honesty,
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which includes fairness in your professional life. When hiring an employee in a

professional environment, you must be able to act with fairness when you make a

decision, based purely on if one candidate is stronger than the other in job-related skills.

The third and final virtue is charity. A hiring manager must have a level of kindness and

compassion for every person, so he can see people with disabilities, or people different

from himself, in a human and caring way. Someone like that would not have the

capacity to discriminate based on people’s differences. The other three virtues in the list

are less relevant to the case study because they are related more to other aspects of

ethics, such as faithfulness, or self-discipline, which both cover personal work ethic,

versus dealing directly with judging other people. Besides the three I discussed, I

cannot presently think of another virtue I could apply to this case study that was not

mentioned.

In summary, I have discussed a few purposes of following a code of ethics, how I

would go about making an ethical decision in such a situation, ethical issues discussed

in class, and our group’s case study regarding discrimination in the workplace, including

how three different ethical virtues applied to the topic. I believe that ethics in the

workplace are extremely important, and that I should make sure to have a solid grasp

on them before I enter a professional environment in the future. Hopefully this essay

has enlightened you on some of the reasons for following a code of ethics, and has

adequately described a few examples of what to do – or not to do – in such situations.