Army Public College of Management & Sciences, Rawalpindi

Chapter-6: Trust and Reliability

 Trustworthiness in engineers is in the following areas:

1. Honesty and dishonesty – Engineering codes contain many references to honesty and emphasise full disclosure. The
term honest has such a positive connotation and the term dishonest such a negative one that we forget that telling
the full truth may be wrong and concealing the truth may be the right thing to do. Despite possible exceptions,
outright dishonesty and various ways of misusing the truth with regard to technical information and judgement are
generally wrong from the standpoint of the ethics of respect for persons and utilitarianism. These actions
undermine the moral agency of individuals by preventing them from making decisions with free and informed
consent. They also prevent engineers from promoting the public welfare. Recognizing the importance of trust and
responsibility in engineering practice, codes of ethics require engineers to be honest and impartial in their
professional judgements.

Utilitarianism requires that our actions promote human happiness and well-being. The engineering profession contributes to
this utilitarian goal by providing designs for the creation of buildings, bridges, and many other things on which our society
depends. It also provides information about technology that is important in decision making at the individual, corporate, and
public policy levels.

Dishonesty in engineering research can undermine these functions. If engineers report data falsely or omit crucial data, then
other researchers cannot depend on their results. This can undermine the relations of trust on which a scientific community
is founded. Dishonesty can also undermine informed decision making. Managers in both business and government, as well
as legislators, depend on the knowledge and judgements provided by engineers to make decisions. If these are unreliable,
then the ability of those who depend on engineers to make good decisions regarding technology is undermined.

2. Confidentiality - Engineers are expected to respect professional confidentiality in their work. With regard to
professionals, the requirement never to conceal truth would mean that engineers could not exercise confidentiality
or protect proprietary information. One can misuse the truth not only by lying or otherwise distorting or
withholding it but also by disclosing it in inappropriate circumstances. A more common problem involving the
improper use of information is the violation of proprietary information of a former employer. Confidentiality would
ordinarily cover both sensitive information given by the client and information gained by the professional in work
paid for by the client.

An engineer can abuse client-professional confidentiality in two ways: a) by breaking confidentiality when it is not
warranted, and b) by refusing to break confidentiality when the higher obligation to the public requires it.

3. Intellectual property rights – this is the property that results from mental labour. It can be protected in the
following ways:

a) Trade secrets – these are formulas, patterns, devices, or compilations of information that are used in business to gain an
advantage over competitors who do not possess the trade secrets. These are not protected by patents.
b) Patents – these are documents issued by the government that allow the owner of the patent to exclude others from
making use of the patented information for 20 years from the date of filing. To obtain a patent, the invention must be
new, useful, and nonobvious.
c) Trademarks – these are words, phrases, designs, sounds, or symbols associated with goods or services.
d) Copyrights – these are the rights to creative products. The author’s estate or heirs retain the copyright for 50 years after
his death. Copyrights protect the expression of the ideas but not the ideas themselves.

4. Expert witnessing – this is required in cases that involve accidents, defective products, structural defects, and
patent infringements, as well as in other areas where competent technical knowledge is required. Engineers must
be credible in court, which depends on their knowledge of engineering, the particular case, and especially the court
process.

Integrity in expert testimony requires not only truthfulness but also adequate background and preparation in the areas
requiring expertise. The expert witness faces certain ethical pitfalls. The most obvious is perjury on the witness stand. A
more likely temptation is to withhold information that would be unfavourable to the client’s case. This can be an

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embarrassment to the engineer because cross=-examination often exposes it. Therefore, the following rules need to be
followed:

a) Do not take a case if you do not have adequate time for a thorough investigation.
b) Do not accept a case if you cannot do so with good conscience, meaning you should be able to testify honestly and not
feel the need to withhold information.
c) Consult extensively with a lawyer so that he is as familiar as possible with the technical details of the case and can
prepare the expert witness for cross-examination.
d) Maintain an objective and unbiased demeanour on the witness stand, including sticking to the questions asked and
keeping an even temper, especially under cross-examination.
e) Always be open to new information, even during the course of the trial.

5. Public communication – some types of professional responsibility in handling technical information may be best
described as a failure to inform those who decisions are impaired by the absence of information. The failure of
engineers to ensure that technical information is available to those who need it is especially wrong where disasters
can be avoided.

The obligation of engineers to protect the health and safety of the public requires more than refraining from telling lies or
simply refusing to withhold information. It may require that engineers aggressively do what they can to ensure that the
consumers of technology are not forced to make uninformed decisions regarding the use of that technology.

6. Conflict of interest – it threatens to compromise professional judgement. A conflict of interest exists for a
professional when, acting in a professional role, he has interests that tend to make a professional’s judgement less
likely to benefit the customer or client than the customer or client is justified in expecting. Professionals are paid for
their expertise and unbiased professional judgement is pursuing their professional duties, and conflict of interests
threaten to undermine the trust that clients, employers, and the public place in that expertise or judgement.

a) A conflict of interest is not just a set of conflicting interests.

b) Simply having more commitments than one can satisfy in a given period of time is not a conflict of interest, which
involves an inherent conflict between a particular duty and a particular interest, regardless of how much time one has
on one’s hands.
c) The interests of the client, employer, or public that the engineer must protect are restricted to those that are morally
legitimate.
d) A distinction is sometimes made between actual and potential conflicts of interest.
e) Even though it is best to avoid conflicts of interest, sometimes this cannot reasonably be done.

 Forms of Dishonesty are:

1. Lying – to lie a person must intentionally or at least knowingly convey false or misleading information. A person may
give others false information by means other than making false statements. Gestures and nods, as well as indirect
statements, can give a false impression in a conversation, even though the person has not told an outright lie. Lies
have 3 elements:
a) It ordinarily involves something that is believed to be false or seriously misleading.
b) It is ordinarily stated in words.
c) It is made with the intention to deceive.

2. Deliberate deception
In addition to misrepresenting one’s own expertise, one can misrepresent the value of certain products or designs by
praising their advantages inordinately, which may have disastrous consequences than outright lying.

3. Withholding information
Omitting or withholding information is another type of deceptive behaviour. One is practising a form of dishonesty by
omission a) if one fails to convey information that the audience would reasonably expect would not be omitted and b) if the
intent of the omission is to deceive.

4. Failure to seek out the truth

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The honest engineer is one who is committed to finding the truth, not simply avoiding dishonesty. It would not be correct to
assume that lying is always more serious than deliberate deception, withholding information, failing to adequately promote
the dissemination of information, or failing to seek out the truth, which can be serious violation of professional
responsibilities.

 Dishonesty in engineering research and testing includes:

1. Plagiarism (copy/piracy) – this is the use of the intellectual property of others without proper permission or credit.
This is really a type of theft. Drawing the line between legitimate and illegitimate use of the intellectual property of
others is often difficult, and the method of line-drawing is useful in helping us discriminate between the two.

2. Falsification of data – this involves distorting data by smoothing out irregularities or presenting only those data
which fit one’s favoured theory and discarding the rest.

3. Fabrication of data – this involves inventing data and even reporting results of experiments that were never
conducted.

 Engineers have some degree of responsibility to ensure that employers, clients, and the general public make
autonomous decisions regarding technology with understanding of their consequences.
 Moral agents are human beings capable of formulating and pursuing goals and purposes of their own. So, they
are autonomous in the sense of being self-governing.
 The line-drawing method involves pointing out similarities and dissimilarities between the cases whose moral
status is clear and the cases whose moral status is less clear. The particular case of interest must be compared
with the spectrum of cases to determine where the line between permissible and impermissible action should
be drawn.

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