Problem Solving
It is expected for an engineer to find themselves in a difficult position when dealing with ethically-concerning issues. One example would be a biomedical engineer working on a potentially functional artificial kidney. During the clinical trial phase, he needs to decide whether to proceed with testing on humans. If he proceeds and the artificial kidney fails, a human test subject could die. However, if he succeeds, his work has the potential of saving the lives of the thousands of people who need kidneys in the future. Although he is in a tough dilemma, he can follow certain guidelines to make thoughtful and responsible decisions. The steps of Problem Solving in Engineering Ethics are (Johanssen, 2009):
- State the Problem: Clearly define what the ethical engineering problem is.
- Get the Facts: Obtain all relevant facts to the matter (i.e. the different moral viewpoints) and then analyze them all.
- Identify and Defend Competing Moral Viewpoints: Analyze the pro and cons of different moral viewpoints and pick the best course of action.
- Come up with a Course of Action: Pick the best course of actions, and answer all un-answered questions.
- Qualify the course of Action: Back up the course of action with facts or statistics.
In the scenario above, the biomedical engineer can first state the problem, which is whether or not to proceed with testing knowing that he could save the lives of thousands, or else cause the test subjects to die. He can then gather all the facts about the test subjects, the device he made, and the different moral viewpoints from others. He can then make a pro and con list of all the moral viewpoints. From this he must pick the best action to take and be prepared to defend it.
In the end, the outcomes are still the responsibility of the engineer, so these guidelines are only meant to be helpful and they do not guarantee any kind of success in the outcomes.