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

Online Ethics Center: Guidelines for Engineers Dissenting on Ethical GroundsGuidelines for Engineers Dissenting onEthical GroundsIEEE Ethics Committee 11/11/96Introduction1. Establish a clear technical foundation2. Keep your arguments on a high professional plane3. Try to catch problems early, and work with the lowestmanagerial level possible4. Make sure that the issue is sufficiently important5. Use organizational dispute resolution mechanisms6. Keep records and collect paper7. Resigning8. Anonymity9. Outside ResourcesConclusionsLast Modified:09/19/05 by mmIntroductionThe goal of these guidelines is to provide general advice to engineers,including engineering managers, who find themselves in conflicts withmanagement over matters with ethical implications. Much of this adviceis pertinent to more general conflicts within organizations. For example,it is not unusual in technical organizations for there to be hard foughtbattles regarding purely technical decisions that do not necessarily haveany ethical implications--but do have impacts on the probabilities ofsuccess of products. The assumption here is that the engineer's objectiveis to prevent some serious harm, while minimizing career damage.Many ethics related disputes are caused by attempts to satisfyirreconcilable constraints. For example, suppose it is impossible to test aproduct adequately in time to meet a delivery date. Missing the deliverydate constitutes a highly visible failure, with clearly defined penalties.There may be no obvious indication that an important set of tests hashttp://onlineethics.org/codes/guidelines.html (1 of 5)10/25/2005 9:15:59 AM