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Engineers, like other professionals, are constantly seized with ethical dilemmas in their line of work and, while they understand that every choice they make will sometimes cause irreparable damage to the community. For example, an environmental engineer of a plant that discharge its effluent into a lake may face an ethical dilemma when making an environmental assessment since he or she may be tempted to falsify the report not to implicate the firm at the expense of societal welfare.
Take the case of Judy, a lady in the male dominated engineering profession, who, at a social dinner the man seated next to her engages her in a conversation, not because she is an engineer but because she is a lady and better looking than her male counterpart. Jack only recognizes her looks is not only superficial but innately sexist and grossly unethical. The main challenge in applying ethics is that ethics are highly subjective; everyone holds a different understanding of what is ethical. The boss in the first case study may feel that denying the community the products his company manufactures is more unethical than discharging the not so much waste into the lake. Jack in the second case study may not see how sexist his remark is. He might have even genuinely liked Judy but for him, he was the ideal gentleman, complementing the lady for her appearance.
References
Pritchard, M. (1992). A Case Study Approach. Retrieved from http://ethics.tamu.edu: http://ethics.tamu.edu/NSFReport.aspx
