{"id":632,"date":"2012-09-17T15:04:34","date_gmt":"2012-09-17T15:04:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.ericjorden.com\/blog\/?p=632"},"modified":"2012-10-09T13:21:03","modified_gmt":"2012-10-09T13:21:03","slug":"professional-ethics-and-the-tyranny-of-the-bottom-line","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.ericjorden.com\/blog\/2012\/09\/17\/professional-ethics-and-the-tyranny-of-the-bottom-line\/","title":{"rendered":"Professional ethics and the tyranny of the bottom line"},"content":{"rendered":"

I was taken by two articles in the Fall Newsletter of APENS, The Engineer, that could be summarized\u00a0by the following comments:\u00a0“…engineers found guilty of misconduct.<\/em>..” and “…skills engineering schools should teach<\/em>“.<\/p>\n

(This does have something to do with forensic engineering as noted below)<\/p>\n

The\u00a0article about skills<\/strong> caught my attention first.\u00a0 It was entitled, The Top 5 Skills Engineering Schools Should Teach<\/em>, and was written by Natalie Cornelius, P.Eng.\u00a0I agree with some of what\u00a0Natalie writes but not all.\u00a0 She identifies\u00a0the following skills:<\/p>\n

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  1. Written communicatoin<\/li>\n
  2. Attention to detail<\/li>\n
  3. Networking, and\/or how to call someone you barely know and get information<\/li>\n
  4. Skillful negotiation<\/li>\n
  5. Flexibility and adaptability<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    I agree with the first, believe the second is being addressed well enough in university now, and believe the remaining three are not fundamental enough for a university program in engineering.<\/p>\n

    I believe a skill that Natalie might have included was Verbal Communication.\u00a0 There’s also another skill\u00a0that, in some form or another,\u00a0might be taught that\u00a0I mention below.<\/p>\n

    The reason for\u00a0my\u00a0views on the article are beyond the scope of this posting.\u00a0 But,\u00a0I do think Natilie’s views on engineering curriculum\u00a0could have been more\u00a0helpful if\u00a0her article\u00a0had\u00a0also reflected the results of interviews with senior engineers in engineering disciplines, fields of practice, and life experiences\u00a0other than her own.<\/p>\n

    The article about engineers found guilty\u00a0<\/strong>caught my attention second.\u00a0 It was entitled, Engineers who declared Lake Algo Centre Mall structurally sound, found guilty of misconduct in 2010<\/em>.\u00a0 This is\u00a0the Elliot Lake Mall that collapsed and that I blogged about a few weeks ago (Cause of roof collapse at Elliot Lake, published July 10, 2012).\u00a0 The article in the APENS newsletter was originally published in The Globe and Mail on Saturday, July 14, 2012.<\/p>\n

    It was encouraging to see APENS carry this item about professional engineers who appear to have slipped up<\/p>\n

    It’s interesting that the engineer’s misconduct had something to do with engineering design and inspection.\u00a0 These were areas that I thought in my blogging were deserving of hypothesizing, particularly construction inspection.<\/p>\n

    I can’t help but think of the pressure some practicing engineers\u00a0are under to do\u00a0the right thing in\u00a0their work.\u00a0 Few if\u00a0any\u00a0knowingly do the wrong thing but we are human and occasionally let our guard down and inadvertently do the wrong thing.<\/p>\n

    Those of us who are in private consulting practice learn early on to be careful of some clients – I could identify but won’t – who leverage the smallest amounts of capital to dizzy levels, and the professional engineers who are\u00a0under pressure to produce inexpensive designs and are swept along in this leveraging.<\/p>\n

    I’ve thought for some time – months if not two or three years, about the subtle pressure professional engineers are under who work for commercial firms and\u00a0fiscally responsible bureaucracies\u00a0where the bottom line rules.\u00a0\u00a0Most professional engineers work for organizations like these.\u00a0 To some extent, engineering professionalism is\u00a0threatened by the\u00a0tyranny of the bottom line.<\/p>\n

    This conflict between the bottom line and professionalism has troubled me enough that I’ve thought to suggest to Chris MacDonald that he blog about ethics\u00a0in\u00a0the professions.\u00a0 Chris\u00a0– I count him as an acquaintance, took his course on critical thinking one time, and had some contact with him since – is a professor at Ryerson in\u00a0Toronto, formerly with Saint\u00a0Mary’s University,\u00a0who blogs about business ethics.\u00a0\u00a0Chris is extremely well recognized world wide in his field.\u00a0 I think professional ethics is a fertile field for a chap like him with his insight\u00a0and knowlege.<\/p>\n

    In any event, to wrap this up, and get back to the two articles I saw in the APENS newsletter,\u00a0I think a course worthy of an engineering curriculum would be one on professional ethics and the pressures on these ethics in a capitalist society.\u00a0 A raising of\u00a0an awareness of these pressures on the part of the young engineer .<\/p>\n

    In Natalie Cornelius’ article, as I would revise it, I would add\u00a0a course on Professional Ethics after\u00a0the course on Verbal Communication that I suggested adding earlier, and this would be\u00a0the last item in the list of skills.<\/p>\n

    Some of the young engineers will practice forensic engineering after they get a few decades of experience under their belts.\u00a0 I can tell you that ethics plays a particularly important role in forensic engineering.\u00a0 There is\u00a0not a little\u00a0pressure on a professional engineer to advocate for the client.\u00a0 There is also the normal\u00a0pressure of a human being identifying with the underdog after the cause of a failure is known.\u00a0 These pressures threaten the professional engineer’s need to be objective as required by the courts.\u00a0 A course in ethics would raise the young engineer’s awareness of these pressures and help him\/her resist them.<\/p>\n

    References<\/strong><\/p>\n

      \n
    1. Cause of the roof\u00a0collapse at Elliot Lake.<\/em>\u00a0 Published July 10, 2012<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

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      I was taken by two articles in the Fall Newsletter of APENS, The Engineer, that could be summarized\u00a0by the following comments:\u00a0“…engineers found guilty of misconduct…” and “…skills engineering schools should teach“. (This does have something to do with forensic engineering … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[16,1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.ericjorden.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/632"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.ericjorden.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.ericjorden.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.ericjorden.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.ericjorden.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=632"}],"version-history":[{"count":13,"href":"http:\/\/www.ericjorden.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/632\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":663,"href":"http:\/\/www.ericjorden.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/632\/revisions\/663"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.ericjorden.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=632"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.ericjorden.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=632"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.ericjorden.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=632"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}