Ethical Engineering: Definitions, Theories and Techniques - Ethical Engineering for International Development and Environmental Sustainability - page 14

Chapter 2
Ethical Engineering: Defi nitions, Theories
and Techniques

Marion Hersh

Overview
This chapter on engineering ethics provides the background and supporting
framework to the topic through presenting a number of defi nitions, theories of ethics
and techniques and approaches for applying them in practice. After the introduction,
the chapter is divided into three main sections. Section 2 considers different theories
of ethics, including rule-based approaches such as the professional codes of
engineering societies. Section 3 presents a number of methods, approaches and
techniques for applying ethical principles in practice. Section 4 considers ethical
issues associated with processes and outcomes and uses the example of assistive
technology to present some of these issues. It also considers research ethics with
regard to both the outcomes and in particular the research aims and the process or
the ethical conduct of research, including working with human participants.

1 Introduction

Ethics relates to questions about right and wrong conduct and techniques and
approaches that can be used to try and obtain satisfactory answers. Often the questions
do not have one clearly defined answer. There may be a number of possible
solutions, all of which have disadvantages or problems, or there could be a number
of obviously wrong answers, but it may be less obvious what the right answer is.
In some cases, ethical issues and the choices of right and wrong are very clear.
For instance, murdering a colleague for personal advantage, for instance, to increase
your chances of promotion or leading a particular project, is clearly unethical.