Engineering Ethics Final 2016

Three Types of Conflicts of Interest

Actual Potential Apparent

Actual Conflict of Interest

"these actually compromise objective engineering judgement" • Example: o When an engineer has financial interest in a company bidding for a contract with the engineer's employer Is it possible for the engineer to maintain objective judgement in this sort of case? In the face of actual conflict of interest, what is morally required of the engineer?

Utilitarian Analyze

1. Check whether there is more good before or after an incident a. If there is more good before, then the utilitarian thinks its immoral b. If there is more good after, then the utilitarian thinks its moral

Kantian Analyzing: Strategy 1

1. Identity the maxim on which a person is acting a. If you can will it to be a universal law (if it would be OK if everyone acted that way), a Kantian thinks its ethical b. If not, a Kantian thinks its immoral

Kantian Alanyzing: Strategy 2

2. Identify whether any one was being used as a means to some ends a. If they agreed, or would agree, to the reasons for using them, then a Kantian thinks its ethical b. If they would not, a Kantian thinks its immoral

Consider Alternative Designs

Alternative designs must be explored

Acceptable Amount of Risk

An acceptable risk is one in which the product of the likelihood of the harm is equaled or exceeded by the product of the probability and magnitude of the benefit (and there is no better alternative)

Foresight

An attempt to foresee and prevent potential problems must be made

What's the secret?

Broccoli Cheese Casserole

Engineered Accident Definition

Caused by flaws in the design

Criteria of Cleanliness

Comparative Criterion Normalcy Criterion Optimal-Pollution Reduction Criterion Maximum Protected Criterion Demonstrable Harm Criterion

What counts as clean?

Comparative criteria, are they comparable to others doing the same job? Normal? Is the amount as to be expected? Lower than normal?

Copy Left

Derivative works of free software must also meet these freedom requirements an arrangement whereby software or artistic work may be used, modified, and distributed freely on condition that anything derived from it is bound by the same condition.

Meet Laws

Design must comply with applicable laws

Meet Standards

Design must meet standards of engineering practice

Proximity

Do you have adequate information? Enough knowledge, no hearsay

Last Resort

Do you have any other choice?

Whistleblowing and the Right of Professional Conscience

Engineers have, "...the right to exercise professional judgment on discharging one's duties and to exercise this judgement in an ethical manner"

Five criteria that help ensure safety

Meet laws meet standards Consider alternative designs Foresight Testing

Conditions of Whistleblowing

Need, Proximity, Capability, Last Resort

What is risk?

Possibility of suffering harm or loss

Testing

Prototypes and finished design must be rigorously tested

Internal Whistleblowing

Reporting an ethical concern to higher level management by bypassing an immediate supervisor

External Whistleblowing

Reporting an ethical concern to source outside the company, such as a newspaper or law enforcement agency

Procedural Accident Definition

Result from someone making a bad choice or not following procedures

Safety at all stages of engineering

Safety should be taken into account at all steps, rather than as an independent problem

Issues With Computers

Self driving cars Where to place moral blame when something runs autonomously

Whistleblowing

The act by an employee of informing the public or higher management of unethical or illegal behavior by an employer or supervisor

Apparent Conflict of Interest

These are not conflicts of interest, nor do they threaten to become conflicts of interest Nevertheless, they can be problematic • Example from the book: o Engineers paid based on percentage of the product cost This is common practice in engineering. Is it really just an apparent conflict of interest? Can we think of a better example? o Problems: Even though there is only the appearance of a conflict of interest, this can have a detrimental impact on trust and working relationships.

Potential Conflict of Interest

These threaten to easily become actual conflicts of interest • Example: o Slowly becoming friends with a supplier of the company How could this become an actual conflict of interest? In the face of potential conflicts of interest, what is morally required of an engineer?

Systematic Accident Examples

ValuJet flight

risk-benefit analysis

We might try a utilitarian-style calculation to determine whether risk is acceptable or not

Acknowledged Whistleblowing

Whistleblowing where the whistleblowers identity is made known

Anonymous Whistleblowing

Whistleblowing where the whistleblowers identity is not made known

Capability

Will any good come of it? Reasonably think that by doing this problems will be avoided

Need

Will something happen if you don't? Is harm going to occur?

Copy Right

form of protection Protect "original works of authorship" Rights to creative products (books, pictures, graphics, music, movies, etc.)

Conflicts of Interest

o "A conflict of interest arises when an interest, if pursued, would prevent someone from meeting one or more of their professional obligations" (Martin and Schinzinger 2000) o "A conflict of interest exists for a professional when, acting in a professional role, he or she has interests that tend to make a professional's judgement less likely to benefit the customer or client than the customer or client is justified in expecting" (Harris, Pritchard, and Rabins 2009)

Anthropocentric vs Non-anthropocentric ethics

o Anthropocentric- Only human beings have intrinsic value. Other objects have value only insofar as they contribute to human wellbeing o Non-anthropocentric- At least some objects in addition to humans have intrinsic value

How to prevent procedural accidents

o Examine everything carefully before signing off o Follow design rules o Attempt to make the safest design possible

How to Avoid Conflicts of Interest

o Follow company policy o Discuss potential conflicts of interest with coworkers and managers

Safety

o Freedom from damage, injury, or risk o Inverse relation to risk

Free Software

o Freedom to run the program, for any purpose o Freedom to study how the program works, and adapt it to your needs o Freedom to redistribute copies so you can help your neighbor o Freedom to improve the program, and release your improvements to the public, so that the whole community benefits software that gives you the user the freedom to share, study and modify it. We call this free software because the user is free. To use free software is to make a political and ethical choice asserting the right to learn, and share what we learn with others.

Recall the intrinsic/ instrumental value distinction

o Is the environment instrumentally valuable? value of objects, both physical objects and abstract objects, not as ends-in-themselves, but as means of achieving something else. o Is the environment intrinsically valuable value that an object has "in itself" or "for its own sake",

Pros of Competitive Bidding

o Keeps prices down o Allows less experienced but competent engineers to be competitive o Promotes innovations leading to lower costs (?)

How to prevent engineered accidents

o Lots of testing!!! o Because it is hard to anticipate every possible problem, need to be able to make changes after actual field experience

Problems with Cost-Benefit Approach

o Making sure costs and benefits are well distributed o How do we assess the costs to the environment?

Engineered Accident Examples

o Micro cracks developing in turbo blades of aircrafts o Challenger O-ring in cold condition

Procedural Accident Examples

o Misreading test results o Misreading gauge o Not properly inspecting something (if you are the inspector) • Someone fails to follow procedure • Ex: overheating in nuclear reactor, person is asleep and doesn't see alarm, doesn't push button and it explodes • Directly leads to the action

Risk as an Objective Product

o One common formula: Risk= Probability of Outcome x Magnitude of Harm o Does this sort of calculation really lead to an "objective" measure of risk

Three types of accidents

o Procedural o Engineered o Systematic

Cons of Competitive Bidding

o Submitting unrealistically low bids, and either cutting corners to make it work, or submitting a number of change orders o Promotes low costs, not good work

How to prevent systematic accidents

o Understand the complexity of the systems in question o Be careful!

Risk depends on many factors

o Voluntarily vs. Involuntary risk? o Short term vs. long term consequences? o Reversible effects? o Expected probability? o Threshold levels for risk? o Delayed vs. immediate risk?

Problems with cost oblivious

o What is "as clean as possible"? o Impractical

When is whistleblowing required?

o When the four conditions are met and there is a great imminent danger of harm to someone if the activity occurs (Edward Snowden, did he meet the requirements?)

The role of informed consent

o You can't make a decision that could have a negative outcome for someone if they have no say in the matter o The people taking on the risk get to choose for themselves as well

Open-Source Software

source code is available for modification or enhancement by anyone. "Source code" is the part of software that most computer users don't ever see; it's the code computer programmers can manipulate to change how a piece of software—a "program" or "application"—works

risk prone

willing to consider a less likely outcome if the risk is greater

risk averse

willing to consider a smaller payoff if it is more likely to occur

When are Conflicts of Interest Problematic?

• A conflict of interest is not just any set of competing interest o Ask yourself; would pursuing this interest have a detrimental impact on my ability to function as a professional? • Simply having more commitments than one can satisfy in a given period of time is not a conflict of interest o Over commitment should be avoided too, however • Interests of the client, employer, or public that the engineer must protect are restricted to those that are morally legitimate

Systematic Accident Definition

• Accidents resulting from the interaction of multiple failures within a larger system o Characteristic of complex technologies and complex organization to control them Swiss Cheese • Hard to understand and hard to control • Little problems when on their own wouldn't make a difference, but together create the problem • Small failures in several aspects • None independently sufficient to bring upon accident, put together cause a big problem to happen

New and Old Ethical Problems presented by computers

• Additional ethical Considerations? o Computers can make the unethical behavior more impersonal o Computers can make the unethical behavior easier to get away with • Some computer ethics issues seem to involve the recurrence of traditional engineering ethics problems, but do not easily fit into old classifications o Computers further exacerbate problems of maintaining privacy by making it easier to gather information, but they might also require modifying older concepts of privacy

Moral Principles of Environmental Ethics

• Although engineers should be required to hold paramount human health in the performance of their engineering work (including health issues that are environmentally related), they should not be required as professionals (i.e. required by codes) to inject non-health-related environmental concerns into their engineering work • Engineers should have the right to organizational disobedience with regard to environmental issues, as this is required by their own personal beliefs or own individual interpretations of what professional obligation requires

Confidentiality: What Can Go Wrong

• Company has right to information they possess • Also, Competitiveness • Problems when something that should have been kept confidential didn't • Problems when you keep something you shouldn't have kept confidential

Competitive Bidding

• Concerns of lowballing price to secure job then hiking up later, or cutting corners to meet low cost

Responsibilities

• Confidentiality and Proprietary Information • Competitive Bidding

Cost Oblivious Approach

• Cost is not taken into account • Environment is kept as clean as possible

Optimal-Pollution Reduction Criterion

• Cost-Benefit analysis

Demonstrable Harm Criterion

• Pollutant that presents harm to humans removed

Proprietary Software

• Problems with protecting Computer Software Ownership: o Insufficiency of copyrights Designed to protect the expression of ideas, not ideas themselves Tests: Original? Functional/ useful? Nonobvious? Alternate expressions? Computer algorithms don't seem to fit here o Insufficiency of patents Designed to protect t inventions Tests: Useful? Novel? Nonobvious? Right type of thing? Computer programs don't seem like processes, machines, or compositions of matter o Is software more like a story or play, or more like an invention? software that is owned by an individual or a company (usually the one that developed it). There are almost always major restrictions on its use, and its source code is almost always kept secret.

Transparency

• Sometimes, conflicts of interest cannot be avoided • NSPE Code Fundamental Canon 4 o a. Engineers shall disclose all known or potential conflicts of interest to their employers or clients promptly informing them or any business association, interest, or other circumstances which could influence or appear to influence their judgement or quality of service

Decision Theory and Risk

• There are several shortcomings to this approach o The probability of consequences? o How to assign value? o Further subjective assessments of risk?

Confidentiality: When is it important?

• This can lead to 2 sorts of ethical dilemmas involving confidentiality o 1) Unwarranted violation of confidentiality o 2)Unwarranted maintaining of confidentiality • Engineers shall hold paramount the safety, health, and welfare of the public • Sometimes, you have higher moral obligations to break confidentiality • Difficulties in determining when confidentiality is appropriate: o The very fine line between company information and personal knowledge

Normalcy Criterion

• We should look to how something was prior to human meddaling • This might go too far

Cost-Benefit Approach

• Weigh the environmental costs vs. the actual costs • Perform the "cheapest" action

Comparative Criterion

• What is better • Problem: Just because it's not as bad does not mean that it is good

Moral standing of the Environment

• What is the moral standing of the environment? o Put another way, do we have a moral obligation to protect the environment? Why or why not? Does your preferred ethical theory affect your answer? • Does the environment include animals? • One way to say that things are worthy of moral consideration is to say that it has value

Confidentiality: Why is it important?

• Why is confidentiality important? o Proprietary Information: information "owned" by the company. It could be argued that a company has a right to this information EX: KFC's Secret Blend of Spices o Information about how a business is run, etc. that can affect the company's ability to make money and be competitive EX: Sales leads • Quick Rule: Don't share anything that will allow a competitor to gain an advantage in the marketplace o To share this information would be a violation of confidentiality

Maximum Protected Criterion

• You need to use every available resource to ensure cleanliness • Take every step possible, if you do this what happens is ok