EECS 398, 399: Senior Project I, II

Professional Ethics

Professional ethics is essential in any profession. What are the professional guidelines for engineers and how do you use them to determine appropriate actions? Professional organizations for engineers publish well-thought out codes of professional conduct. As an electrical, computer or systems & control engineer you should be familiar with the

• IEEE Codes of Ethics
• NSPE (National Society of Profession Engineers) Codes of Ethics
• ACM (Association for Computing Machinery) Code of Ethics

Ethical Reasoning

There are also many courses in ethics for scientists and engineers. These deal not with professional codes of ethics but with broader questions of what is "right" and "wrong" and how to systematically deal with ethical decisions. A good textbook which presents ethics and ethical practice is Fundamentals of Ethics for Scientists and Engineers by Seebauer and Barry.

• Chapter 1 - What are the fundamental concepts of ethics?
• Chapter 6 - How to analyze complex ethical situations Value theory allows you to analyze complex ethical decisions.
• Chapter 10 - Truth: social What is truth? What are our ideas or intellectual property, how do we publish our ideas, who owns them, how do we judge the truth of what others say or publish?
• Chapter 12 - Fairness How do we deal with environmental consequences of our designs or inventions, what is the role of the legal expert, what is the relationship between our professional work and the rest of our life?
• Chapter 15 - Differing ethical systems Our concepts of ethics are dteermined by our society. How do we work with people from other societies with different ethical systems?

Ethical Report

• Ethical dilemma

  Based upon the situation and the IEEE Codes of Ethics and the NSPE (National Society of Profession Engineers) Codes of Ethics what is the ethical dilemma?

  Many situations involving software and digital information are increasingly important in our ethical decisions. You might also find the ACM (Association for Computing Machinery) Code of Ethics to be useful.

• Choices available

  Describe the principle choices available to the engineer. You do not have to forsee all possible actions.

• Possible outcomes

  What are the results of each possible plan of action?

• Economic results

  Many engineering ethical situations also have economic consequences for both the company and the enginer. Describe the economic pressures (if any) of the situation.

• Your decision

  What is your recommended resolution? Justify your decision using the appropriate Code of ethics.

Situations

Download the ethical situations for this semester.

Discussion Situations

There are many ethical dilemmas which are far more complicated than the assignments you will each analyze. The following represent famous situations as well as a hypothetical in which you could very easily find yourself.

• Morton Thiokol space shuttle diaster Undoubtly the most famous engineering ethical dilemma.
• LaMacchia software distribution Are you distributing audio or video from your computer?
• Internet Privacy This link describes a number of very relevant situations.
• Killer Robot (hypothetical - recommended reading)

Grading

Download a copy of the evaluation form that will be used use to grade your ethics papers.

Download sampled graded ethics papers sampled graded ethics papers .

Professional Registration

You should consider becoming a registered Professional Engineer. This demonstrates both your technical competence and your adherence to a professional code of ethics. This is becoming increasingly important even to software and network engineers. Check out Ohio's Engineers and Surveyors Board for information on becoming a registered professional engineer in the State of Ohio. Graduating students should check with Prof. Merat about when and how to take the exam .