Codes of conduct or ethical codes exist in many professions. Engineers can also commit themselves to being good.

Engineering Ethics

The first code of ethics for engineers is the Ritual of the Calling of an Engineer — written by Rudyard Kipling in 1925 — for new Canadian engineers. It says an engineer shall not suffer or pass any Bad Workmanship and will not refuse their time, thoughts and care towards any work. Fair wages are expected and colleagues shall not be evil-eyed. After swearing to this in the presence of more senior engineers, the new engineer receives an Iron Ring. This ring is to be worn on the pinkie of the working hand as a constant reminder of both pride and humility in all engineering work.

Personally, I remember agreeing to a code of scientific integrity when receiving my Masters of Science degree. Promising to hold myself to the principles of honesty, diligence, transparency, independence and responsibility that are necessary to move forward the scientific method.  Researchers and engineers share ethical similarities in that they should hold on to the responsibility of their work. Bad research, bad design or bad workmanship has consequences. We must all individually stand for our work because our work matters.

 

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Source: unsplash.com/@manueljota

Good Circuits

More specific to building hardware would be the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) Code of Ethics.

“We, the members of the IEEE, in recognition of the importance of our technologies in affecting the quality of life throughout the world, and in accepting a personal obligation to our profession, its members and the communities we serve, do hereby commit ourselves to the highest ethical and professional conduct and agree:”

A list follows that includes things like holding PARAMOUNT the safety, health and welfare of the public, protecting privacy, COMPLYING with ethical design and sustainable development practices, to seek and offer CRITICISM of technical work, to be REALISTIC in stating claims, NOT to engage in discrimination or harassment and to SUPPORT colleagues in following this code.

That the welfare of the public is paramount obviously means that you shouldn’t be providing elevators with circuitry that you know is flawed. But what about global welfare when we keep producing hardware that we know will end up in the ever-growing mountain of e-waste? Whether or not this is included in your personal obligation is left as an exercise to the reader. The Code continues that we should comply to ethical design practices. Sounds excellent, but this frees us from the responsibility of creating new ethical practices. Confirming the status quo, whatever this may be. Being ‘in compliance’ is often seen as a rather minimal threshold for being ethical. In seeking and offering criticism, I recognize desirable collegiality and the very useful principle of peer-review. However, we could also take this to mean that everything should be Open Source if we are truly seeking to learn from each other. 

I think the IEEE Code of Ethics is an excellent starting point that all hardware engineers should have no problem committing themselves too. How much further you interpret your personal obligation to go is up to you. We could move the status quo.

About the Author

Priscilla Haring-Kuipers writes about technology from a social science perspective. She is especially interested in technology supporting the good in humanity and a firm believer in effect research. She has an MSc in Media Psychology and makes This Is Not Rocket Science happen.