Ethical 'due process' for engineers

This article is taken from my 2009 blog which explored topics in science and technology.  It remains pertinent today given the importance of ethical considerations in the implementation of advanced technologies.

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The destruction of the Challenger Space Shuttle in 1986 is a well-documented chapter in the history of engineering failures.  Maybe that's unfair. We should probably describe it as an organisational failure within the engineering sphere.

Months later it emerged that one engineer in particular, Roger Boisjoly*, had attempted to stop Challenger’s launch in the hours preceding its destruction, due to his concerns for the compromised ‘O’-ring seals. In seeking to override a management team determined to push ahead with the launch, Boisjoly was jeopardising both his professional reputation and the progress of US space exploration in circumstances which seem entirely rational now, but only with the benefit of hindsight.  (* Surname pronounced similar to the French wine region, Beaujolais.)

Roger Boisjoly receiving the 1988 AAAS
Scientific Freedom and Responsibility Award

The story of Boisjoly, and his actions that night, make an excellent case study in the ethics of decision-making in scientific and technical environments. How far should one risk one’s own career for the reputations and lives of others? Can we trust and act upon our own minority judgement, under pressure, even against an exasperated majority? To answer these questions, we should turn to ethics.

Ethics may be defined as the analysis and determination of “what is right”. It is a highly contextual, yet objective discipline. In theory ethics should lead us to know how best to act in any particular scenario.

Subconsciously or otherwise, ethical considerations pervade every professional decision. Indeed, even a non-decision has implications because doing nothing is the same as doing something. So how should engineers behave in situations similar to those faced by Boisjoly? Is there an ethical framework within which decisions could be made?

Courtney Campbell said, in 2002, that the crux of a mistake lies “in an incomplete and inadequate process of decision-making.” This process is central to the argument presented below, and would appear to be analogous with legal ‘due process’. This analogy is chosen because legal due process implicitly absolves participants (including prosecutors and judges) from blame when, for example, an innocent person is sent to jail. Due process ensures that decision-making is fair, even when it happens to be wrong.

Hence, an engineer need not be constrained by the burden of decision-making in a life-or-death scenario, providing his or her actions are the product of something I call ethical due process.

This idea may be illustrated by Chris MacDonald’s (2002) eight steps for ethical decision-making:

1) Recognise the moral dimension;
2) Identify interested parties;
3) Identify the values;
4) Weigh the consequences;
5) Look for similar cases;
6) Discuss with stakeholders;
7) Evaluate the decision against laws or rules;
8) The sanity check: “Am I comfortable with this decision?”

Ethical guidance from three professional engineering societies has been reviewed for this article: the NSPE, IEEE, and IIE [now called the IISE]. Each prescribes a code of conduct couched in succinct and accessible language. However, none of the societies prescribe an ethical decision-making process similar to MacDonald’s eight steps. I would argue that such ethical due process would add value as a supplementary article to any professional code of conduct.

Without asking the man himself, we don’t know whether Roger Boisjoly consciously adopted an ethical framework in his efforts to postpone the Shuttle launch. However, he probably did enough to absolve himself of any responsibility for the ensuing events because, as the historical record showed, his decision to speak out and the actions associated with that decision did bear some resemblance to the process described above.

Boisjoly's career-threatening intervention was publicly recognised two years later. In the accompanying photograph he is shown receiving the 1988 AAAS Scientific Freedom and Responsibility Award.

Ethical due process may not be a guarantee of successful outcomes, but it would surely enable us to sleep more easily when things do go wrong.

Writer: PJ Moar of Moar Partnerships
Email: p.moar@moar.com
Twitter: @MoarPart