Engineers in the public domain - Code of ethics Vs reality!!!!

When I read through all 8 clauses in the codes of ethics for the Engineers, which establishes the good conduct for an Engineer, the clause 3 reads as “Engineers shall build their reputation on merit and shall not compete unfairly” and the rule 3.1 is to ensure that “engineers shall not seek to gain a benefit by improper means. It follows that engineers – shall neither pay nor offer, directly or indirectly, inducements to others”.

I just want to put a simple question? Are we Engineers holding this value – Majority, may be YES and minority may No or worse and some are questionable? The reputation is built on merits of ones own good conduct. Do we have a barometer to measure this in reality…?

I share what I hear from the society – from the person who deals with Engineers, which then extends to other public which in turn is talking point in the public domain, is that some Engineers are often corrupted from the day they come out of the University and just beginning their career paying a bribe to get a job. I don’t want pinpoint here what people are specifically talking about (but few cases - even some engineering colleagues also speculate), which is not the aim of this article, but just to raise questions whether do we have mechanism specifically address these professional issues.

As I pointed out earlier – People think that only few Engineers do that or did that in the past – may be few, but still a point for our concern as professionals, which have a negative impact in the society! I’m not sure who is involved in this bribe – if it is an another superior Engineer – then you have a second layer of problem – not only for the job hunting Engineer – but more importantly with the Engineer involved in getting bribe for recruitment.

Let this pass on and dwell within our professional circle ------, but more for the public – it is the job for an Engineer in an Engineering company or in a Engineering institution, be it state or private – interviewed and offered by an Engineer ---- All are Engineers in the chain and may be some others as well – intermediaries, which is always a complicated picture.

Next, if this trap is successfully climbed– be it through bribe (which may be rare – rather than saying more common for engineering jobs compared to other jobs – No evidence or assessment that I know of so far). But getting a job in a professional way – not bribing anyone – then you are in a biggest trap in the circle of un-professional and un-ethical engineering business world, which is getting bribe in your work for favoring contractors, bids, privileged monitoring and evaluations, signatures etc... which goes through all phases of a project cycle of a project and also in different projects in a programme?

I just would like to highlight one thing through this little story which I here in the recent past. We teach “Engineers in society” – good ethics and professional conduct and evaluated ourselves from our side through discussions, forums and so on to be more proud of – but have we ever evaluated us from the public side – from the people who receive our service, from who have competed for our services and have good and bad experiences of dealing with Engineers responsible and from the end users of our service, to better understand what it means to be an Engineer in the society who holds what is in the code of ethics. We may need to have this monitoring barometer to ensure that the above code of ethics is really worth in practice. This could be a concern for an Engineer who wishes to uphold the real implementation of code of ethics in his professional and personal life.

Eng. Aslam Saja 
May 2012