Engineering is a profession that requires individuals to exercise a lot of knowledge to enhance competency in various activities. Primarily, an engineer needs skepticism about his ability while delivering his duties to improve caution. Uncertainty is usually prevalent when creating new things and the professional has to make some assumptions, for instance, when designing new equipment. Professionalism requires that an individual discharge his or her duties with care and ensure that the person delivers the obligation mandated. Apparently, like any other professionals, engineers have a responsibility to different people that they ought to meet. Engineers have a sense of responsibilities that they are expected to uphold due to the trust people have in them (Shelton). Moreover, they have a duty to use their knowledge in an ethical way and ought to consider the social implications of their actions.
In essence, the monetary concept guides most people in their search for work, and they are attracted by jobs that offer higher pay. The motivating factor varies from individuals across the board. There is need to make ethical choices of jobs by engineers to ensure that their activities have a positive implication to the society for a longer period, for instance, work in green energy to save the environment.
Ethics is the code of behavior that guides the conduct of a particular group of people for example professionals. Engaging in activities that violate such a code of behavior is usually an unethical sign by the perpetrator (Robinson,26). Morality, on the other hand, defines what is right or wrong in society. Thus, immorality occurs when someone is doing something that is wrong. Both ethics and morality define the behavior of a particular group of people and violation of either is bad. However, ethics covers a smaller number of people compared to morality, which may encompass a whole society or even country. Authority is essential to running a society and defines what is legal. It has become part of the culture in different societies.All the three concepts that are morality, ethics, and legality are essential components for a society to function. Additionally, they define what is expected of an individual in a particular setting.
In engineering, there are no specific rules set aside that can be applied. Thus, the ethical question varies from situations. Notably, there exist two laws that define ethics in engineering: The macro and the micro law. The former addresses issues that affect the whole society, for instance, the environmental impact of a particular technology. On the other hand, the micro law addresses a local scenario and does not have a lot of implication on society, for example, an engineer may assent to a set of results due to coercion by the supervisor despite knowing that they are false (Shelton). Ethical situations are not clearly defined and often individual realizes that they have committed unethical acts when it is already late. As such, it is important to consider such situation before they occur.
Works Cited
Shelton, Jeff. "Episode 12 — Ethics | The Engineering Commons Podcast". Theengineeringcommons.com. N.p., 2012, Theengineeringcommons.com. Accessed 26 Jan. 2017.
Robison, Wade L. "Ethics in Engineering." Proceedings of the IEEE 2014 International Symposium on Ethics in Engineering, Science, and Technology. IEEE Press, 2014.
