Ethics for an Electrical Engineer

Being an Ethical Engineer

As human beings, we strive to be ethical so that people will trust us. However, "ethical" is such a vague term. One way to describe an "ethical engineer" would be someone who fulfills the terms of their contracts and agreements in a thorough, professional manner and also acts in the best interests of society and/or the environment[1].

Make sure you're honest and doing your best work.

Fulfilling Contracts and Agreements

An electrical engineer would need to fulfill the terms of their contracts and agreements in a thorough and professional manner. This is fairly straight forward and can apply to all branches of electrical engineering. Simply put, an electrical engineer needs to complete the job to the best of their ability and do everything they agreed to do prior to taking the job.Also, an electrical engineer must be honest with their employer about their abilities and only take jobs they know you have the knowledge to complete.

When fulfilling these agreements, an engineer should also be acting professionally. Towards others, an an electrical engineer must be polite, open-minded, and patient just to name a few. This is because an electrical engineer does not represent only his or herself, s/he also represent coworkers and the company s/he works for. Therefore, it is his or her responsibility to act in professional, respectful
manner.

Accounting for society and the environment

Second, an ethical engineer has to take in to account the wellbeing of the environment and society. A few specialties that electrical engineers can branch off into are circuit designers, telecommunications engineers, and power engineers in power plant. Among these specialties, acting unethically could lead to differing kinds or levels of consequences. If a circuit designer acts unethically by being lazy and not abiding by their agreements, it could lead to a waste in the companies research money. If telecommunication engineer does the same thing, it could inconvenience companies which would in turn reflect badly on the company. If a power engineer acts unethically, it could possibly lead to the death of their coworkers.

To reiterate, when a circuit designer acts unethically, they may harm their company and not affect the general populace. When a telecommunications engineer acts unethically, it could mean that a group of people do not have internet coverage for a period of time, but no physical harm is done. However, when a power engineer acts unethically, people lives may be at risk both inside the power plant and in the area surrounding it.

The Chernobyl Disaster

One example of this is the Chernobyl disaster. Before this disaster, inexperienced electrical engineers tried to run an experiment in a nuclear power plant. Due to their inexperience, lack of safety procedures, and flawed designs, one of the reactors exploded. This killed one man on sight and subsequently killed 28-29 others due to immediate radioactive poisoning. Then this led to the displacement of roughly 300,000 people. Even today, Chernobyl remains too radioactive to be hospitable. If you are there for an extended period of time, you will die. Due to the negligence of engineers, this affected more than just the people in the plant. This affected everyone surrounding it and living near the plant. Because of unethical engineering practices, Chernobyl remains uninhabitable to this day and radiation has spread across a large region of Europe affecting millions[2]. 

Chernobyl disaster leaves city uninhabitable to this day

References

[1]	IEEE, 2017. [Online]. Available: https://www.ieee.org/about/corporate/governance/p7-8.html. [Accessed 05 Oct. 2017].
[2]	Z. W. Seh, 15ut Feb. 2015. [Online]. Available: http://large.stanford.edu/courses/2015/ph241/seh1/. [Accessed 5 Oct. 2017].