accounting disciplines
Ethics in Engineering
In the past 50 years, there has been a growing awareness of obligations to stakeholders other than Charles Smith clients and employers. This increasing recognition initially began with safety issues but then extended to other issues such as health and well-being of the general public, environmental pollution, the exhausting of natural resources, sustainability and human rights (Zandvoort et al., 2000). However, engineering ethics education did not gain momentum until the late 1990s where increasing recognition of ethics in engineering has been spurred on in part by the political controversy over nuclear weapons, environmental quality and consumer rights (Herkert, 2001/2002). The notion or professional ethics in engineering is typically described (by Schinzinger, 1996 cited in Herkert, 2000, p. 304) as ‘…the creation of useful and safe technological products while respecting the autonomy of clients, and the public, especially in matters of risk-taking’. Zandvoort et al. (2000) similarly views ethics in engineering as the conflict between the loyalty and legally enforced responsibility of the employer on the one hand, and the obligations to the public. According to Kline (2001/2002) major ethical issues in engineering ethics involve both professional conduct and wider social implications of engineering. They include:
• Public safety and welfare
• Risk and the principle of informed consent • Conflicts of interest
• Whistle-blowing • Trade secrets • Accepting gifts
In engineering, courses on ethics are often irregular and their integration into the engineering curricula is poor (Porra, 2000; Didier, 2004). According to Herkert (2000, p.303) “……nearly 80% of engineering graduates attend schools that do not have an ethics-related course requirement for all students”. Engineering ethics education is a recent phenomenon with only a few prominent universities offering required courses in ethics to its students (Herkert, 2001/2002). In general, schools of engineering do not have formal positions on ethics education and lack regular financing for such courses. The problem is exacerbated when one considers the number of professional ethics educators in the SEFI (European Society for Engineering Education) community is small.
The goals of teaching ethics continue to be debated but there is general agreement on sought after outcomes. According to Herkert (2000), they include:
• increased ethical sensitivity;
• improved ethical judgment; and • improved will-power to act ethically.
Didier (2004) similarly states that there are three major objectives of an ethics course in engineering, which include:
• to make engineering students aware of their future responsibilities;
• to help them realise to what extent they can find some degree of freedom within the institutions in which they will work; and
• to enable them to strengthen their moral convictions by means of moral discussion.
The pedagogical framework of engineering ethics education has evolved primarily toward the utilization of case studies and the code of ethics (Herkert, 2000). The use of case studies are central to the teaching of ethics (Didier 2004). They help students learn about safety issues and the complex relationships among the many stakeholders in the developmental process, such as design engineers, subcontractors and government regulatory bodies.
Ethics in law
According to McCaffrey (2002), the win-at-all-cost mentality by legal practitioners has direct implications for public perception of the legal profession that appears to say anything to advance their case. The public have subsequently raised a number of ethical concerns regarding lawyers, which include:
• questions about the honesty of the legal profession;
• the level of ethics is sometimes ranked lower than other professions including medical practitioners and business executives;
• lawyers are perceived by the public as charging more than what their services are worth; • lawyers work harder for wealthy clients; and
• lawyers are not concerned about rogues within the profession.
As a consequence of the declining public perceptions, the Minnesota Task Force on Law Schools and the Profession issued a statement of fundamental lawyering skills. The report addresses many issues but in regard to ethics it states that as a member of a profession that bears special responsibilities for the quality of justice, a lawyer should be committed to the values of:
• promoting justice, fairness, and morality;
• contributing to the profession’s fulfillment of its responsibility to ensure that adequate legal services are provided to those who cannot afford to pay for them; and
• contributing to the profession’s fulfillment of its responsibility to enhance the capacity of law and legal institutions to do justice.
In accounting and engineering programs, ethics education is largely voluntary, however in law, a course on Professional Responsibility is a mandatory curriculum requirement. The requirement to teach Professional Responsibility was established during the 1970s and is normally taught in
the early stages of the degree program. Even though ethics is compulsory in the law curriculum, the extent and quality of such education can vary considerably between institutions (Bobelian, 2004; Pearce, 2002). In some programs, Processional Responsibility is taught in as little as one week in a relatively few hours (Bobelian, 2004). According to Pearce (2002), legal ethics remains no better than a second class subject in the eyes of students and faculty. The teaching of ethics is either ignored or it is given lip service. All efforts to teach ethics is doomed to marginal impact only, until legal ethics is recognized as the most important subject in the law school. Given the perceived ineffectiveness of this current system of education (Rosenberg, 2002), educators are calling for substantive integration of ethics throughout a lawyer’s education (Bobelian, 2004).
In regard to course objectives, Pearce, (2002) states that legal ethics should provide the lens through which students view what it means to be lawyer and discover how to find meaning in their work. Legal ethics and professional responsibility should be used as a tool to re-emphasize to students and the public that the legal profession is an honorable profession in which all stakeholders are treated with respect, civility and dignity. In one course on Professional Responsibility (Lopez, 2002), the objectives are threefold:
• teaching the law of lawyering – to help students understand policy reasons for the rules; • exploring professionalism issues – what it means to be lawyer and to reflect on the rules;
and
• critically examining the profession – viewing themselves as professionals with the power to change the profession.
Nursing ethics
The ultimate goal of nursing is to promote the well being of the patient. Therefore, the nurse- patient relationship is at the heart of nursing (Gastmans, 2002). Providing care, comfort and preserving human dignity in the face of extreme pain requires an ability to be sensitive and engage with another human being in a situation of vulnerability and stress (Gastmans, 2002). Nurses today frequently make choices relating to informed consent, treatment, maintenance of life and/or resuscitation (Krawczyk, 1997). Care-giving is more than a technical relationship, it is an interpersonal interaction.
The extent and type of ethics coverage in degree programs varies between institutions. Few schools offer ethics as a separate course but many schools integrate ethics into the existing curricula (Krawczyk, 1997). Citing other authors, Krawczyk (1997) states that there is a lack of systematic research in nursing ethics; a lack of a well-defined ethics content; and lack of a systematic approach to teaching ethics; leaving nursing students confused about their roles and task responsibilities in making ethical decisions. Ethics in nursing education should show the ways in which personal and professional life stands to be enriched or enhanced by the possession of such virtuous qualities and attitudes (Gastmans, 2002). Ethics education is a matter of cultivating virtue, excellences, and developing ethical sensitivity on the part of nurses.
Medical ethics
Biomedical advances of the past 20 years such as stem cell research and the transplantation of human organs have stimulated a renewed interest in medical ethics. Similarly, issues that were not apparently issues a generation ago have now become issues: informed consent, gifts from pharmaceutical companies and patient rights to privacy have become increasingly pertinent to the practice of medicine (Martinez, 2002). Other issues that raise legal and ethical dilemmas include assisted suicide, abortion and genetic technology.
Like law, ethics education became am established part of medical education during the late 1970s (Miles et al. 1989). However, what is glaringly lacking in the medical profession is a structured, basic, uniform approach to the subject of ethics that is understood and practiced by all physicians (Martinez, 2002). A review of the formal study of ethics in medical schools in the US discloses a sincere but poorly coordinated approach to what should be recognized as one of the most important subjects taught to all medical students. According to Martinez (2002), many medical schools offer only minimal exposure to medical ethics with courses consisting of a few weeks discussing a myriad of topics only of interest to the teacher. Physicians are left to determine for themselves what conduct is appropriate, with only vague guidance from the profession and no structured educational training (Martinez, 2002). In 1994, a meeting of experts at the World Health Organization (WHO), called for a compulsory subject within the medical curriculum (Press Release, 14 October 1994).
According to the Australian Medical Council (2000), the goals of basic medical education should instill in graduates knowledge and understanding of the principles of ethics related to health care and the legal responsibilities of the medical profession. Also, graduates should have an appreciation of the complexity of ethical issues related to human life and death, including the allocation of scarce medical resources. In general, ethics education will enhance physicians’ understanding of their values and social responsibilities, enhance physicians’ ability to identify value conflicts in medical care, and enable physicians to address more successfully ethical dilemmas with patients and other professionals (Miles et al. 1989). Specific goals of medical ethics education include:
• ensuring physicians to recognize the humanistic aspects of medical careers;
• enabling physicians to examine and affirm their own personal and professional moral commitments;
• equipping physicians with a foundation of philosophical and social issues; • enabling physicians to employ this knowledge in clinical reasoning; and
• developing within physicians the interaction skills needed to apply this insight, knowledge and reasoning to human ethical care.