Ethical Engineering: Definitions, Theories and Techniques - Ethical Engineering for International Development and Environmental Sustainability - page 40

The facilitator typically 'breaks the ice' by disclosing something about themselves,
thus encouraging others to do the same. It is important that the facilitator ensures
that disclosures are appropriate (Egan 1973 ) in order to ensure that the ethics, inter-
personal psychology and authenticity of the process are protected. The statements
that are made need to be authentic in terms of the following criteria:

1. Breadth: how much do you want to tell?
2. Depth: level of intimacy.
3. Duration: amount of time devoted to the process (experience indicates this
frequently overruns!).
4. Target: to whom is information to be disclosed?
5. Relationships: is it a friend, acquaintance, colleague etc.?
6. The situation in which the workshop takes place: for example, private or public
place.

Guidelines for using this technique (Brockbank and McGill 1999 ; Cozby 1973 )
include encouraging participants to use statements which begin with 'I' rather than
'you', talk about feelings rather than 'facts' and avoid the abstract and remain
relevant and interesting.
Self-disclosure can be diffi cult in western cultural settings where it is discouraged
amongst, for example, students. Refl ecting back is also very powerful in this context.
It is important to recognise potential power dynamics between different members of
the group, due to identity factors, such as gender, class or race, different experiences
and minority positions. This is in addition to power dynamics resulting from differences
in position, status and security of tenure in the organisation and the possibility
of discussions that should be confi dential to the group being reported back to man-
agement. The workshop can be accompanied by a semi-structured questionnaire
exploring primary dimensions of the gestalt which the group wishes to address.
The essence of the approach is to expand quadrant 1 in terms of personal ethics
through an increased awareness of the engineer's (or other participant's) personal
values as well as an impression of others' personal positions and ways in which your
personal ethics impinge upon others.

3.2 The Ethical Grid

The Ethical Grid (Seedhouse 1988 ) was developed as a tool to support ethical
reasoning and decision making by health workers. However, it can also be applied
in other areas, including engineering projects. It is presented here as an example of
a pluralist methodology, which combines basic principles and deontological and
consequentialist ethics. It thus has a number of advantages. However, all method-
ologies also have their drawbacks. The Ethical Grid consists of four different layers,
as shown in Fig. 2.4 :

1. The fi rst layer consists of basic ethical statements. It provides the core issues of