paper

ECS 392

Fall 2017

PAPER 6

(Details)

Date due: Monday, October 23, at 10:00 pm (via Turnitin)

Length: 600 to 700 words

Topic: First, review pp. 137-141 in Introduction to Engineering Ethics.

Remember that a person has a conflict of interest when he or she has (1) a professional obligation to serve the best interests of another party (employer, client) AND (2) an incentive (money, personal relationship, competing obligation, etc.) not to fulfill that professional obligation. (Remember, too, that a conflict exists when these two conditions hold, whether or not the individual in fact acts on that incentive). Also, often conflicts of interest are not recognized as conflicts of interest. What matters is that conditions (1) and (2) are present in the individual’s (or team’s) choice situation. (Note: It is not unethical to have a conflict of interest. What’s unethical is acting on it, violating your professional obligation. Often, it is also unethical not to disclose the conflict when you have one.)

In this paper, I would like you to analyze at least two cases in which an engineer or other technology professional (or team of them) acted unethically by acting on a conflict of interest. You can draw them from recent news stories, but you also have the option of constructing the scenarios yourselves, doing a bit of fiction writing. (Make sure they a realistic situations.)

In your analysis, do the following, for each case:

1. Identify the ethical decision maker(s), the relevant facts of the choice situation, and the unethical behavior.

2. Indicate exactly what the decision maker’s professional obligation was in the situation—the obligation that was violated in the unethical behavior.

3. Explain what the decision maker’s incentive was not to fulfill his or her (or their) professional obligation, the incentive that the decision maker seems to have acted on in violating that professional obligation.

At the end of your paper, be sure to cite your sources.