Questions about engineering ethics as it relates to professional practice, especially: professional organizations and licensing bodies; ethics review boards; topics on the PE/FE exams; etc. Not to be confused with liability or personal/individual morality.
Questions tagged [ethics]
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My customer wants to use my products to do something unsafe. What is my ethical obligation?
We sell products that attach to a motor drive's DC bus. We also formerly sold diode kits that let you hook one product up to multiple drives. We stopped selling those diode kits because they were unreliable with modern hardware, and we had better…
Stephen Collings
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Why were engineers negligent in the 1981 Hyatt Regency walkway collapse?
I was recently reading up on the 1981 Hyatt Regency walkway collapse. It was a tragic loss of life and haunts many to this day.
The linked article does a better job of summarizing things, but here's a summarized version of what led up to the…
user16
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What is an engineer's liability for code changes that occur after submitting a design?
What if any liability would an engineer have in the following situation? This is specifically in reference to engineering within the USA.
An engineer produces a design and plans that meet the standards and codes in effect at that time. The design…
hazzey
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Ethics in an interview
I was wondering about the ethics of an interviewer asking to see your design notebooks in an interview.
First off, I'm not sure if it's even legal for someone to ask that, since many of the designs I have are covered by (Non disclosure Agreements)…
Diesel
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How do I transition to legit freelancing, coming from a background of unethical projects?
I am a recent electronics engineering graduate, currently legally working as an embedded software engineer in a company.
In the future, I would like to become a freelancer, like signing up on a freelancing website and getting hired to do real…
Krishnan
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How to approach potential hazards that may result from user misuse, in a product design phase?
I am researching guidelines and considerations with respect to user safety when designing commercially sold products that contain user-operated machinery and moving parts (I.e. motors, pulleys, magnetic locks, etc). My objective for this work is to…
Pholotic
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Balance between technical and philosophical training
I'm interested in potentially studying engineering, specifically cybernetics and possibly robotics with machine learning or AI for assistive technology, probably with a focus on hygiene. Coming from a pure physics and math background, I have a…
TLDR
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