Prospects for International Standards
by Vivian Weil
Presented at the OEC International Conference on Ethics in
Engineering and Computer Science, March 1999
It is exciting to hear about initiatives in engineering
ethics in other countries and instructive to learn how our
colleagues abroad deal with obstacles. Two components of the
teaching of engineering ethics are so demonstrably necessary
that we can assume that they are applicable in every country
where engineering has a presence. One is the use of concrete
instances, that is, cases. The other is the appeal to
engineers' special ethical standards in devising responses to
problems in the cases.
A concrete situation brings out how practical, technical,
and ethical considerations are interwoven in defining and
solving engineering problems. In analyzing cases and
constructing solutions, engineers need their technical skills.
The imagination to see how to deploy technical insight is
essential. But engineers also need to be able to express their
viewpoints clearly (sometimes forcefully); they have to
appreciate the perspectives of other parties to the situation;
they have to understand the social relationships around them;
they need to be able to imagine consequences of alternative
courses of action; and they need to be able to negotiate with
others.
One issue that has troubled some teachers about using cases
concerns what moral or ethical framework to appeal to in
analyzing cases and making recommendations for action. They
find a plurality of religious and other traditions and outlooks
among people and peoples, between and within countries.
Teachers may be puzzled, therefore, about whether there are
common standards to which they can legitimately appeal. If
there are not, it seems that the effort of teaching cases
cannot go forward.
A little reflection reveals that there are common moral
standards; we refer to them as our common morality. My
colleague, Michael Davis has usefully characterized our common
morality as, "Those standards of conduct everyone
(that is, every reasonable person) wants everyone else to
follow even if everyone's following them would mean having to
follow them oneself." "Don't kill," "Don't deceive," and "Don't
cheat" are among the standards of our common morality.
Different people and groups may have different reasons for
acknowledging the same standard, such as religious principles,
self-interest, or a process of reasoning. What is important is
agreement on the standards. Though we encounter violations and
even patterns of violation at some times and places, these are
the standards to which we hold one another. Violations stand
out and command attention against the background of our common
standards and expectations.
Our common morality, then, provides a fundamental framework
of standards to appeal to in reasoning about cases. In teaching
professional ethics, we have an additional framework: the codes
of ethics promulgated by the professions through their
professional associations. These ethical standards are special
sets of standards adopted by occupational groups and binding
upon the members of the group because they are members of the
group. Drawing from the characterization I have given of our
common morality, we can describe professional standards as
those "morally permissible standards of conduct each member of
some particular occupational group wants every other member of
the group to follow even if everyone else's following them
would mean having to follow them too."
A profession's ethical standards must be compatible with our
common morality, but they go beyond our common morality. You
could say that they interpret our common morality for the
specific details of work of a particular occupational group.
For example, almost all the engineering codes of ethics in the
U.S. include as a provision, "Engineers shall act in
professional matters for each employer or client as faithful
agents." Avoiding injury to the employer or client is a
requirement for engineers specific to their conditions of
practice.
Professional codes, then, reflect our common morality and
the circumstances of practice in a particular society.
Circumstances change and codes undergo revision, as
professional societies respond to pressures from outside and
from within the world of practice. Currently, professional
engineering societies in the U.S. are beginning to respond to
widespread concern about the environment. Some engineering
societies have considered whether existing codes already
encompass protection of the environment, by way of Canon 1:
"Engineers shall hold paramount the safety, health, and welfare
of the public in the performance of their professional duties."
Two societies have added provisions regarding the environment
to their codes. In view changes such as these, we can speak
about an evolving morality in the profession, or an evolving
ethics, ethics being the conventional term in the U.S. for
professional standards.
Debates are an important feature of the process of drafting
and revising codes; accordingly, I will concentrate on debates
in engineering societies. Participants resolve debates by
negotiation and compromise, and code provisions reflect the
work of committees. In the U.S., periods of energetic activity
in revising codes followed World War I and World War II.
Perhaps the most intense activity of this kind in the U.S.
occurred in response to the social ferment of the late 60s and
early 70s. It is in this last period that almost all
engineering codes in the U.S. adopted Canon One above. At that
time, all the major professions came under closer scrutiny than
before, and they had to respond to demands for accountability
to the public. Canon One of the engineers' codes serves as a
touchstone for engineers and engineering students who are
trying to resolve problems. It does not imply specific
solutions, but it reminds engineers of their weightiest
obligation as professionals.
From the recently published article of a Russian colleague,
we learn about debates over engineering codes in Russia in the
period just before the Revolution, of course, a time of social
ferment in Russia. Some in the debate were inclined to adopt
the code of a U.S. society that was an ancestor of the IEEE.
That code emphasized personal honor and engineers' obligations
to their employers, giving less importance to obligations to
the public. A figure in that Russian debate was an engineer
named Osadchiy, a contemporary of the engineer Peter
Palchinsky, who is known to us from Loren Grahm's historical
study, The Ghost of the Executed Engineer. It
seems that Osadchiy challenged the view that an engineer is "a
hired executor of the owner's directives." That was about sixty
years ahead of systematic discussion of this issue in the U.S.
and the adoption of Canon One.
Osadchiy also objected to a U.S. Code's provision that "All
projects, data, notes, etc. made by the engineer at the time of
his ... service and related directly to his field of work are
property of the principal." In this objection, Osadchiy focused
on a provision reflecting a legal ground rule of business
competition in the U.S. that is still accepted. This kind of
vigorous debate was choked off when the political authority
that crystallized after the Revolution deprived engineering
societies of their independence and brought a halt to the
evolution of codes in the U.S.S.R.
These examples from the U.S. and Russia/U.S.S.R. show how
codes evolved to reflect our common morality and the national
circumstances of business. They show that ways of doing
business as well as ethical issues were comprehensible across
national boundaries. They show the possibility of reasoned
debate where there are differences in professional standards
across national boundaries. Finally, in the adoption of the
paramountcy obligation in the U.S. long after it was favored in
Russia, they show the convergence of standards across national
borders. It is interesting to note that periods of social
ferment seem to be associated with increased focus on ethics
within professions.
In view of the ease with which engineers, companies, and
engineering products cross borders and move over vast regions
of the world, these observations of comprehensibility and
convergence of standards across borders should not surprise us.
The strong increase in international business and engineering
should alert us to the need for international agreement or
convergence on ethical standards for engineers. However, we are
not yet close to articulating international codes of ethics
that could be presumed to be binding on engineers in all
countries. It is, therefore, important to consider the
prospects for producing international codes. A more detailed
consideration of the conditions for arriving at that goal
should be illuminating in itself and may even inspire some
activity in that direction by professional societies and
engineering educators.
Ethical codes, like technical codes, respond to problems
that engineers commonly encounter. At each stage in their
development, codes represent the consensus of a particular
community of engineering professionals, and they, in turn, help
to define a community of engineering professionals. Both
ethical and technical standards are part of and expressions of
the expertise of engineers. The Wright brothers, working just
before the promulgation of the first ethics codes in the U.S.,
began their experiments that led to successful aircraft only
after studying the codified knowledge of European predecessors.
They understood that such information was crucial to their
safety and the safety of others.
Safety is a leading ethical concern in engineering; this
concern underlies technical standards and becomes explicit in
codes of ethics. We can array tables, codes, standards, and
rules on a continuum from the technical to the ethical. All
this guidance is translated into routines of practice that
shape the discretionary space of engineers. But these routines
leave room for individual judgment.
Some may have taken it for granted that codes are produced
and guide practice in a straightforward way. Perhaps this view
is attractive because in a single national context, codes look
like engineering end-products that just go on to fulfill their
function, like certain other engineering products - engines,
for example. However, products of engineering activities,
whether technological products for the marketplace, technical
codes, or ethical codes, embody a variety of interests,
tensions, and assumptions. All are produced from a process that
is deliberative, political, and marked by negotiation and
compromise. Consider, for example, the process of producing a
new sport utility vehicle. You can observe the process in the
response of the American Society of Civil Engineers, following
the 1979 Hyatt Walkways collapse. Out of their effort came more
detailed standards regarding oversight responsibilities of
structural engineers for shop drawings prepared by others.
Nor is the process by which codes shape practice
straightforward. As a British scholar recently put this point,
"Why should the use of standards be more straightforward than
their development?" This scholar went on to point out that
issues and arguments that come up in the development of codes
tell us not only about the standards setting process but also
about the social process of engineering.
Fortunately, we have sources that reveal some of the
pitfalls in the process of formulating standards. Engineering
societies produce not only standards but also documented
discussions and accounts of debates that occur in the process
of deliberating about standards. These are published in
journals, that are among the societies' key resources for
fostering professionalism. Recent research on discussion about
standards in the British journal, The Structural
Engineer, reveals some issues likely to arise in other
areas of engineering and surely in the international
context.
One issue in the debates concerned the relation of
engineering codes of practice to statutory building
regulations. In the United Kingdom, there are building
regulations that include a so-called "deemed to satisfy"
provision. According to this provision, work performed in
conformity with the engineers' codes of practice will
automatically satisfy the statutory building regulations. This
link between legal codes and engineers' voluntary codes
troubled some who feared it would turn the codes of practice
into de facto mandatory codes. Although it is not legally
mandatory to conform to engineering codes, following them
satisfies the regulations which are mandatory and avoids a
customized analysis to prove conformity with building
regulations. Some worried that as a result new information
would not be used in practice unless it had been incorporated
in the engineers' Code of Practice. Such outcomes, some feared,
would put the emphasis on conformity to government regulations
rather than on good engineering. Those drafting codes would
keep their eyes on regulations rather than making engineering
standards their principal concern.
However, there is a response to this worry that supports the
prospect of formulating international professional standards
for engineers. Consider that in countries like the U.S.,
pointing to conformity with government regulations does not
provide a defense in consumer product liability litigation. The
failure to meet appropriate engineering standards, even when
there is no violation of government regulations, can leave a
company vulnerable in a product liability lawsuit. There is,
then, in the face of legal standards, a basis for continuing to
emphasize good engineering standards, ethical as well as
technical, and to advance those standards by incorporating new
knowledge. This line of thinking can be used to advance the
enterprise of formulating international ethical standards.
Another issue that came out in the debate recorded in the
British journal and likely to arise in any effort to arrive at
international standards is the influence of academics and the
relevance of academic research. Debate about this issue brought
to the surface tension between research and practice, hardly a
new phenomenon. Some complained that self-interested academics
promoted guidelines based on their research but not
sufficiently tested in practice. While others replied that lack
of knowledge of developments in research on the part of
tradition-bound practitioners prevented inclusion of desirable,
clear reference to basic concepts. This tension between
academics and practitioners also surfaced in the process of
drafting a code for software developers in a recent joint
project of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics
Engineers and the Association for Computing Machinery. When
practitioners sent comments on the code that had been drafted
on-line under the leadership of an academic, some complained
that the code was not sufficiently attuned to the
workplace.
Such disagreements may reflect conflicts over turf, over the
ownership and control of standards. But that may be only part
of the story. To do full justice to the complexity and interest
of these debates, we should recognize that different
conceptions of technological work and the role of professional
standards in shaping that work may be playing out. If that is
so, these disagreements in the process of formulating (and
ultimately in using) standards may be productive. That is
because they allow differing views to be expressed and
progressive accommodations to be made. Among the conditions for
arriving at international standards for practice is the
provision of opportunities for such debates to take place.
There is a model in a recent project to devise common standards
for American, Canadian, and Mexican engineers under the NAFTA
treaty. Initially somewhat skeptical, engineers representing
the three countries eventually succeeded in gaining formal
agreement on a robust common code.
Finally, it is necessary to acknowledge the challenge to
international standards from differences in local conditions.
For example, in some places, the resources to make standards
affordable are lacking. To deal with variations in local
conditions, it will help to understand standards as conditional
statements. If you want X, under conditions Y, then do Z. If
you are an engineer designing a building for a locale that is
not earthquake-prone, you can ignore certain conditions that an
engineer in such a locale must take into account.
It will also help to be realistically modest about the
claims we make for what standards can accomplish. They provide
rough boundaries for practice and a vocabulary for carrying on
discussion. They contribute to predictability and a degree of
uniformity that makes other benefits possible.