Engineering and ethics

Engineering ethics is that form of applied or professional ethics concerned with the conduct of engineers. Though engineers do many different things, they share a common history, which includes codes of ethics. Most codes explicitly declare public health, safety and welfare to be ‘paramount’. Many questions of engineering ethics concern interpretation of ‘public’, ‘safety’ and ‘paramount’. Engineers also have important obligations to client and employer, including confidentiality, proper response to conflict of interest, stewardship of resources, and honesty (not only avoiding false statements but volunteering certain information). Each engineer also has obligations to other engineers and to the profession as a whole.