Twenty-First Century
Sustaining Engineering Codes of Ethics for the Twenty-First Century
Diane Michelfelder • Sharon A. Jones
Received: 7 April 2011 / Accepted: 6 September 2011 / Published online: 23 September 2011
� Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2011
Abstract How much responsibility ought a professional engineer to have with regard to supporting basic principles of sustainable development? While within the
United States, professional engineering societies, as reflected in their codes of
ethics, differ in their responses to this question, none of these professional societies
has yet to put the engineer’s responsibility toward sustainability on a par with
commitments to public safety, health, and welfare. In this paper, we aim to suggest
that sustainability should be included in the paramountcy clause because it is a
necessary condition to ensure the safety, health, and welfare of the public. Part of
our justification rests on the fact that to engineer sustainably means among many
things to consider social justice, understood as the fair and equitable distribution of
social goods, as a design constraint similar to technical, economic, and environ-
mental constraints. This element of social justice is not explicit in the current
paramountcy clause. Our argument rests on demonstrating that social justice in
terms of both inter- and intra-generational equity is an important dimension of
sustainability (and engineering). We also propose that embracing sustainability in
the codes while recognizing the role that social justice plays may elevate the status
of the engineer as public intellectual and agent of social good. This shift will then
need to be incorporated in how we teach undergraduate engineering students about
engineering ethics.
Keywords Engineering codes of ethics � Engineering education � Paramountcy clause � Social justice � Sustainability
D. Michelfelder
Department of Philosophy, Macalester College, St. Paul, MN 55105, USA
e-mail: [email protected]
S. A. Jones (&) School of Engineering, University of Portland, Portland, OR 97203, USA
e-mail: [email protected]
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Sci Eng Ethics (2013) 19:237–258
DOI 10.1007/s11948-011-9310-2
Introduction
The National Society for Professional Engineering (NSPE) revised its Code of
Ethics in 2007 to encourage engineers to ‘‘adhere to the principles of sustainable
development.’’ Similar organizations have stressed the need for engineers to support
these principles in the course of their professional practice. Further calls, however, for engineers to consider the related issue of social justice have met with
considerable debate over what such inclusion may mean for engineering codes of
ethics (Scherer 2003). For example, Vesilind (2002) claims that ‘‘engineers can,
while staying well within the bounds of the present Codes of Ethics, destroy or
modify the environments that support the global ecosystem and in such manner kill
future humans on a grand scale’’ (92). Others, though, have argued that while
sustainability can be ‘‘engineered,’’ justice is a separate societal goal beyond the
scope of the engineer (Agyeman and Evans 2003; Agyeman 2005). There is also the
question of whether the addition of sustainability to the codes of ethics is redundant:
i.e., does the fundamental canon for all professional engineers to ‘‘hold paramount
the public’s welfare’’ already include a commitment to sustainability and perhaps
social justice as well? Even those who agree that sustainability, justice, and the
fundamental canon are not redundant, see the first two issues as outside of the
paramountcy clause, thus devaluing such adherence in professional practice,
perhaps even to the point of making such adherence supererogatory.
Much of the debate described above centers around the relationship among
sustainability, justice, and public health and safety. By better understanding this
relationship, the NSPE and other professional engineering organizations can
appropriately incorporate sustainability into engineering codes of ethics, and thus
exert a positive influence on the practice of engineering. We recognize there are
many critiques of these codes in terms of their ability to affect the individual
engineer who is often faced with many conflicting goals related to project execution.
Some of these critiques are presented in Davis (2001), even as the author tries to
dispel them. While we acknowledge the existence of these critiques, the
implementation of the codes is not the subject of this paper. Instead, we intend to
further discussion, particularly among professional engineers, of what should be
included and prioritized within the codes. We aim to suggest that sustainability
should be included in the paramountcy clause because it is a necessary condition to
ensure the safety, health, and welfare of the public. Our argument rests on
demonstrating that social justice in terms of both inter- and intra-generational equity
is an important dimension of sustainability (and engineering). We also propose that
embracing sustainability in the codes while recognizing the role that social justice
plays may elevate the status of the engineer as public intellectual and agent of social
good. This shift will then need to be incorporated in how we teach undergraduate
engineering students about engineering ethics.
Calls for the engineering profession to deepen its commitments to sustainability
and social justice and proposals to rephrase engineering ethics codes to better reflect
such commitments have mounted in recent years (see for example Baillie and
Catalano 2009; Catalano 2006a, b; Riley 2008.) Our approach adds to these calls by
emphasizing the need to include sustainability in the paramountcy clause of the
238 D. Michelfelder, S. A. Jones
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codes and by looking at social justice as a dimension of sustainability. We start our
discussion with an overview of what the term sustainability has come to mean, first
in terms of engineering codes of ethics and second, in terms of the engineering
profession itself. This overview demonstrates the uncertainties regarding how
sustainability currently meshes with engineering. We then show how the inclusion
of sustainability in the codes serves to address these uncertainties.
Sustainability and Engineering Codes of Ethics
The phrase ‘‘sustainable development’’ was formally added to the NSPE Code of
Ethics in 2007 and to ASCE’s code in 1996; however, it is missing from the codes
for the other traditional engineering professional organizations. And, both ASCE
and NSPE treat the term in different ways that affect its importance in terms of the
hierarchy of values within the codes.
The NSPE code includes six fundamental canons, followed by rules of practice
that provide guidance to engineers on how to adopt these canons as part of
professional practice. Neither the canons nor the rules of practice include any
reference to sustainability or to sustainable development. Instead, the six canons
stipulate the paramountcy clause in terms of the safety, health, and welfare of the
public, and refer to characteristics such as competency, loyalty, honor, reputation,
and honesty in the fulfillment of professional duties. Rounding out the NSPE code is
a list of nine professional obligations that, if adhered to, also help an engineer to
follow the code. Several professional obligations are closely tied to specific canons.
One of these nine professional obligations states that engineers shall at all times strive to serve the public interest. It is here that one finds the phrase engineers are encouraged to adhere to the principles of sustainable development, as one of four suggestions for how to accomplish this professional obligation. In other words,
according to the NSPE, while engineers are encouraged to ‘‘adhere to the principles
of sustainable development’’ so that they fulfill their obligation to ‘‘strive to serve
the public interest,’’ they are not required to follow these sustainability principles to
‘‘hold paramount the safety, health, and welfare of the public.’’ One is left to
conclude that NSPE does not view sustainable development as a necessary
condition for maintaining the public’s safety, health, and welfare.
ASCE uses the Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology’s (ABET)
Code of Ethics as the framework for its own code. ASCE describes four
fundamental principles for civil engineers to follow to ensure compliance with the
canons, followed by the canons themselves, and then guidelines for how to practice
each canon. None of the four fundamental principles specifically includes
‘‘sustainability.’’ However, ASCE changed the canons in 1997 to include
sustainable development in the first and primary canon as follows: Engineers shall hold paramount the safety, health and welfare of the public and shall strive to comply with the principles of sustainable development in the performance of their professional duties. And in 2009, ASCE adopted the following definition of sustainable development: ‘‘Sustainable development is the process of applying natural, human, and economic resources to enhance the safety, welfare, and quality
Sustaining Engineering Codes of Ethics 239
