IEEE Technology and Society Magazine - Winter 2014 - 46

up these pedagogical shifts to, at
worst, a form of lip service or, at
best, ambiguous endeavors that do
little to actually enhance engineers'
ethical capabilities [cf. 14]. Moreover, as philosopher of technology
Langdon Winner [20] laments, the
overemphasis on case studies and
individually based "microethical"
dilemmas does not prepare engineers to confront the larger political and moral issues related to how
technological systems are built and
integrated into society.
"When [survey] results are normalized to account for number of
graduates per institution, nearly
80% of engineering graduates
attend schools that do not have an
ethics-related course requirement
for all students" [9]. Even if ethics
pedagogies are carefully planned
and implemented, these dismal statistics show that a minority of engineers are exposed to them.
Moving beyond the education phase, when it comes time
for professional engineers to put
their ethical training to use, there
is little support for bracing them
against negative reactions and consequences. Engineers who have followed the relevant codes - such
as by whistleblowing or refusing to
participate in unethical practices -
often must face "demotions, firings,
blacklisting, and even threats to life
and limb" [10]. Without institutional
support, say, from a professional
society, an ethical engineer has little
incentive to do the right thing without taking on the heavy burden of
economic or physical risk. Indeed,
the lack of ethics support is largely
a consequence of the increasing
corporate influence in professional
engineering societies [10].
Concerns about the efficacy of
codes can be addressed through
efforts such as implementing widespread ethics education and developing robust institutional support.
However, there are deeper issues with
how codes as such change the moral
landscape - changes that can be detrimental and ought not be ignored.
46

If professionals actually do follow the relevant code then they can
checkmark the box for ethics, right?
It should be no surprise that an algorithmic form of ethics can't possibly

trained in their respective codes,
are also trained in the intricacies of
interpreting those codes.
What's more, emphasizing codes
results in conceptual consequences

Microethical dilemmas
do not prepare engineers
to confront the larger political
and moral issues.
account for all the ethical dilemmas, both large and small, that fall
outside of archetypal case studies
and principles. Even then, "codes
are presented as sufficient to handle
the complex conflicts of duty which
constitute real ethical debate" [6].
But, what we must recognize is
that codes embody and propagate
certain value-laden visions of a
saintly professional - and thus
they neglect the messy, dynamic,
and complex realities of both people and the world [cf., 18], [19].
Relying on ethical choices that are
made "by the book" - even assuming an in-depth knowledge and
recall of the code's provisions -
leaves much to be desired as far
as understanding tricky situations
and tradeoffs.
Proponents of codes attempt
to head off this critique by arguing that interpretation is a central
aspect of using a code - naturally,
professionals interpret provisions
first and then apply the spirit, if not
the letter, of a code to a situation [4],
[5]. After all, many codes contain
principles that are vague in their
overarching decrees - such as the
NSPE's first Fundamental Canon:
"Hold paramount the safety, health,
and welfare of the public" - and
hence interpretation is necessary.
What these arguments miss is that
interpretation is, in itself, a learned
skill. People do not a priori possess the moral reasoning abilities
to interpret principles and provisions so they can be applied in an
ethical manner. It's not clear that
professionals, even when they are

for what it means to be counted as
an ethical professional. To quote
ethicist Bob Brecher [2] at length:
"Codes reflect exactly the
ambivalence of professionalization itself: their function is
at one and the same time to
hold professionals accountable
and to protect them from moral
accountability. Put crudely,
professional ethics instrumentalize moral concern; and in
doing so, both take morality
out of the picture and depoliticize the object of what might
have been moral concern....
whether or not a nurse is working 'ethically' all too easily
becomes a matter of checking,
and checking off, against a list
of rules, while the rules themselves remain morally and
politically unexamined."
Following Brecher, codes shape
ethics into an instrumental application - just another tool, among
many, in the engineer's box - to
be referred to (or not) in the case
of a discrete event. Extreme cases
aside, if a professional follows the
appropriate code, then she has performed her duty and is absolved of
liability. Codes do not encourage
people to understand ethics as both
something that courses through all
aspects of life and as a key part of
being a "good" person. Instead,
ethics is degraded into that which
fits in a code and can be marked as
completed or not - thus succumbing to the technocratic specter that

IEEE TECHNOLOGY AND SOCIETY MAGAZINE

WINTER 2014

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