Unit –II

PROFESSIONALISM

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Moral Reasoning

• Ethical (or moral) dilemmas are situations in which moral

reasons come into conflict, or in which the applications of moral
values are unclear, and it is not immediately obvious what should
be done.
• Steps in Resolving Ethical Dilemmas
1. Moral clarity: Identify the relevant moral values
2. Conceptual clarity: Be clear about key concepts
3. Informed about the facts: Obtain relevant information
4. Informed about the options: Consider all (realistic) options
5. Well-reasoned: Make a reasonable decision

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Accreditation-Certification-Licensing

• Accreditation, licensing, and certification may vary by location

and by the entity providing the credential.

• To check with your local jurisdiction to determine what is

required.

• Accreditation, licensing, and certification are not

interchangeable terms. They each have a unique meaning and
implication.

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Accreditation

• Accreditation is both a process and a credential

• The accreditation process is voluntary

• Only organizations, agencies, or programs can be accredited

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Certification

• Certification demonstrates the capability to provide a

specialized service or particular program

• Typically, certification is voluntary, but sometimes regulatory

bodies require certification in order to provide a specific
service

• Individuals, facilities, programs, organizations or agencies can

obtain certification.

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Licensing

• Licensing exists primarily for public safety and the well-being of

consumers

• Typically, licensing is involuntary

• Individuals, facilities, programs, organizations or agencies can

be licensed.

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15SE204 - Professional Ethics And
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Codes of ethics
• Codes of ethics state the moral responsibilities of engineers as
seen by the profession and as represented by a professional
society.
• Codes of ethics play at least eight essential roles:
1. Serving and protecting the public
2. Providing guidance
3. Offering inspiration
4. Establishing shared standards
5. Supporting responsible professionals
6. Contributing to education
7. Deterring wrongdoing
8. Strengthening a profession’s image

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Abuse of Codes
• When codes are not taken seriously within a profession, they
amount to a kind of window dressing that ultimately increases
public cynicism about the profession. Worse, codes occasionally.

• Preoccupation with keeping a shiny public image may silence

healthy dialogue and criticism.

• The best way to increase trust is by encouraging and helping

engineers to speak freely and responsibly about public safety
and well-being

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Limitations of Codes
• Codes are no substitute for individual responsibility in grappling with
concrete dilemmas. Most codes are restricted to general wording, and
hence inevitably contain substantial areas and Codes of Ethics of
vagueness.

• Other uncertainties can arise when different entries in codes come

into conflict with each other. Usually codes provide little guidance as
to which entry should have priority in those cases.

• limitation of codes connects with a wider issue about whether

professional groups or entire societies can create sets of standards for
themselves.

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Justification of Codes

• When these values are specified as responsibilities, they

constitute role responsibilities - that is, obligations connected
with a particular social role as a professional.

• These responsibilities are not self certifying, any more than

other customs are.

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Professional conduct
• A code of professional conduct is a necessary component to
any profession to maintain standards for the individuals
within that profession to adhere. It brings about
accountability, responsibility and trust to the individuals that
the profession serves.
• The importance of professional conduct in all areas of the
corporation must be backed by support for professionals who
work according to the guidelines outlined in professional
codes of ethics.

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Professional Rights
• Engineers have several types of moral rights, which fall into the
sometimes overlapping categories of human, employee,
contractual, and professional rights.

• Three professional rights have special importance:

1. The basic right of professional conscience

2. The right of conscientious refusal

3. The right of professional recognition

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Professional Rights
• Right of Professional Conscience.
• The right of professional conscience is the moral right to exercise
professional judgment in pursuing professional responsibilities.
Pursuing those responsibilities involves exercising both technical
judgment and reasoned moral convictions.
• Right of Conscientious Refusal.
• The right of conscientious refusal is the right to refuse to engage
in unethical behavior and to refuse to do so solely because one
views it as unethical.
• Right of Recognition.
• Engineers have a right of professional recognition for their work
and accomplishments. Part of this involves fair monetary
remuneration, and part nonmonetary forms of recognition.

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Employee Rights
• Employee rights are any rights, moral or legal, that involve the
status of being an employee.

• They overlap with some professional rights they also include

institutional rights created by organizational policies or
employment agreements, such as the right to be paid the
salary specified in one’s contract.

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Employee Rights
• Privacy Right.

• The right to pursue outside activities can be thought of as a

right to personal privacy in the sense that it means the right
to have a private life off the job.

• Right to Equal Opportunity: Preventing Sexual Harassment.

• Unwanted imposition of sexual requirements in the context

of a relationship of unequal power. It takes two main forms:
quid pro quo and hostile work environment.

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Employee Rights
• Right to Equal Opportunity: Non discrimination.

• Perhaps nothing is more demeaning than to be discounted

because of one’s sex, race, skin color, age, or political or
religious outlook.

• Right to Equal Opportunity: Affirmative Action.

• Affirmative action, as the expression is usually defined, is

giving a preference or advantage to a member of a group
that in the past was denied equal treatment, in particular,
women and minorities.

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Environmental ethics
• Environmental ethics is the part of environmental philosophy which
considers extending the traditional boundaries of ethics from solely
including humans to including the non-human world.

• It exerts influence on a large range of disciplines including

environmental law, environmental sociology, ecotheology, ecological
economics, ecology and environmental geography.

• It refers to

1. The study of moral issues concerning the environment

2. Moral perspectives on those issues.

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Environmental ethics

• The Invisible Hand and the Commons

• Engineers: Sustainable Development

• Corporations: Environmental Leadership

• Government: Technology Assessment, Incentives, Taxes

• Market Mechanisms: Internalizing Costs

• Communities: Preventing Natural Disasters.

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Environmental ethics
• Environmental Moral Frameworks
• Individual engineers can make a difference. Although their
actions are limited—within corporations, they share
responsibility with many others—they are uniquely placed to
act as agents of change, as responsible experimenters.
• Human-Centered Ethics
• Human-centered, or anthropocentric, environmental ethics
focuses exclusively on the benefits of the natural
environment to humans and the threats to human beings
presented by the destruction of nature.
• Sentient-Centered Ethics
• One version of nature-centered ethics recognizes all sentient
animals as having inherent worth. Sentient animals are those
that feel pain and pleasure and have desires.

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Environmental ethics
• Biocentric Ethics
• A life-centered ethics regards all living organisms as
having inherent worth.
• Ecocentric Ethics
• A frequent criticism of sentient-centered and biocentered
ethics is that they are too individualistic, in that they locate
inherent worth in individual organisms.
• Religious Perspectives
• Each world religion reflects the diversity of outlooks of its
members, and the same is true concerning environmental
attitudes..

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Computer Ethics
• Computers have become the technological backbone of society.

• Their degree of complexity, range of applications, and sheer

numbers continue to increase.

• Computer ethics has special importance for the new groups of

professionals emerging with computer technology, for
example, designers of computers, programmers, systems
analysts, and operators.

• Some of the issues in computer ethics concern shifts in power

relationships resulting from the new capacities of computers.

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Computer Ethics
• The Internet and Free Speech
1. Obscene pornography is pornography that is immoral or illegal in many
countries, and is not protected in the United States by the First Amendment
rights to free speech.
2. Two types of control of pornography and hate speech have been attempted:
top-down control by governments, and bottom-up controls by individuals and
groups in the marketplace.
• Power Relationships
• Computers and the Internet dramatically increase the ability of centralized
bureaucracies to manage enormous quantities of data, involving multiple
variables, and at astonishing speed.
1. Job Elimination
2. Customer Relations
3. Biased Software
4. Stock Trading
5. Military Weapons
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Computer Ethics
• Property
• The most troublesome issues about property and computers fall under two
general headings.
• Embezzlement
• Data and Software
• Privacy
• Storage, retrieval, and transmission of information using computers as data
processors has revolutionized communication.
• Inappropriate Access
• Hackers
• Legal Responses
• Additional Issues
• Computer Failures
• Computer Implementation
• Health Condition
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