The Online Ethics Center for Engineering & Science - Department of ...

Online Ethics Center: Maintaining Professional Standards: Writing a Letter of RecommendationMaintaining Professional Standards:Writing a Letter of RecommendationNiemeyer is an engineer working for a medium-size manufacturingcompany and is being considered for a promotion. Niemeyer's employercontacts other engineers who have worked previously with Niemeyer andasks for their comments.How should an employer determine who should be contacted for peerperformance evaluations? Should the person being evaluated have inputinto the selection of peer review? Should the peer review results beshared with the employee? Should this be open or anonymous?One of the people contacted about Niemeyer is Singh, who is currentlyemployed by another company and who no longer has a directprofessional relationship with Niemeyer. Singh is aware that Niemeyerhas dropped his membership in the state professional engineering society.Singh believes that it is incumbent upon all engineers to support theirprofession through membership in the professional society -- preferablyin an active role, or at least by payment of dues. Because of this Singhrefuses to comment on Niemeyer's performance.Last Modified:09/26/05 by mmWhat is Singh's obligation to his collegue concerning perfomancereview? Do members of a profession have an obligation to particpate intheir professional societies? Why or why not?The employer reports Singh's comments to Niemeyer. How, if at all,should Niemeyer respond to his employer? To Singh? Should Niemeyercommunicate with the professional society about this incident?--adapted from NSPE Case No. 77-71996 NSPE Code of Ethics This is the version of the code archived in theOEC. An earlier version may have been used in this case.Original Case and BER JudgmentReturn to the Index of NSPE-based Caseshttp://onlineethics.org/cases/nspe/ec77-7.html (1 of 2)10/25/2005 9:09:33 AM