Ethical Decision-Making Frameworks for Engineering Education: A Cross-

Disciplinary Review
Introduction
The work of an engineer involves countless decisions and judgement calls
during every step of the planning, design, implementation, and evaluation
phases of any given project. These decisions may impact the public in a myriad
of ways, with significant implications for public health, safety, and security.
Consequently, it is imperative that engineers enter the profession fully prepared
to make ethically sound decisions in response to the ethical dilemmas and
challenges they may confront. While every engineering discipline has a code of
ethics to guide decisions that have ethical implications [1], codes of ethics have
several limitations. First, they cannot possibly capture every potential situation
that may arise where ethical decision-making is necessary. Second, they are of
limited use when faced with ethical dilemmas for which there is no clear choice
that does not carry some degree of ethical risk. The overarching motivation for
our work is to address the need for a practical framework that can be used to
teach ethical decision-making to engineering students so that they are able to
make well-reasoned ethical decisions, and offer pedagogical strategies designed
specifically to address these limitations. Before developing such a framework,
we sought to review existing ethical decision-making frameworks from a
variety of disciplines that can serve to inform our work.
Background
Most engineering educators would likely agree with Sheppard’s observation
that, “the undergraduate engineering program is a crucial moment for
professional formation” [2]. However, developing a strong professional identity
can be challenging, particularly if undergraduate engineering programs focus
almost exclusively on academic goals. While it is undeniably important for
students to gain the technical knowledge and competencies required to perform
the essential functions of their future profession, the time that students spend in
undergraduate programs are also a crucial developmental period when the
engineer-in-training begins building their personal and professional values and
approaches to ethical decisionmaking. Engineers operate within a community
and their work both affects and is affected by others. Increasingly, the input
needed to guide the work of engineers transcends conventional mathematical,
scientific, and procedural information. For any given decision, today’s engineers
must ask questions such as “Is this design eco-friendly?”, “Does this system
have the safety features needed to protect privacy?”, “Is the cost of this product
likely to put it beyond the reach of anyone who isn’t very wealthy?”, “How can
I balance my obligations to society when they seem to conflict with the interests
of the company funding my project?”. Consequently, education, when designed
to prepare students for the real world must also prepare them to develop their
social awareness and abilities and acquire a clear sense of professional values in
order to develop and to sustain successful, healthy relationships with those with
whom they work and with those they seek to serve.
Unfortunately, such “soft skills” are often given short shrift in the undergraduate
curriculum [3]. As a 2015 study by Garibay suggests, it seems that within
engineering and related fields, this strong focus on technical knowledge, and
lesser emphasis on social and ethical skill development may reflect student
preferences [4]. In their survey of 6,176 undergraduate students (39% majoring
in STEM, 26.5% beginning in STEM and then changing their major to another
field, and 30% never majoring in STEM), they found that those students that
remained in STEM reported that their career goals were more important than
social change, a response which was not reported by their non-STEM peers.
This is a concerning result, when we consider the profound responsibilities that
accompany the role of an engineer. As Nair and Bullet propose [5], it is
necessary to create an educational experience that allows for ethical
considerations “to be brought up naturally”. In this way, we allow for the
students to develop skills within the areas of micro-ethics, pertaining to
individual responsibility, and macro-ethics, to ensure the integrity of the
collective ethical of the engineering profession.
In addition to merely recognizing the need for understanding one’s ethical
obligations as a practicing engineer, it is also important to consider the need for
developing students’ capacity for making careful, well-reasoned ethical
decisions. This process is considerably more complex than memorizing a code
of ethics, or even applying ethical rules to training scenarios or case studies.
Engineering activities are progressively becoming more complex, with constant
technological advances, expanded roles, and expectations for contributing to
social justice and socially responsible practices and outcomes. Instead of simply
designing physical structures, machines, devices, or manufacturing processes,
engineers are now regularly interacting with environmental policies and
regulations, sensitive health information including those protected by Health
Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), private corporate
communications, and other information that may create new and complex
demands on the individual to exercise due care, balance competing demands,
and make value-laden decisions. This new, broadened access to multiple sources
of potentially sensitive data and the increased emphasis on socially responsible
practices leads to a much more complex job. The ethical dilemmas that arise
tend to be more challenging and less black and white than those confronted by
previous generations of engineers. Instead of simply running into deadlines,
pressures to cost-cut, ensuring quality, addressing user preferences, and
managing dual-role relationships, engineers are also faced with ethical questions
related to data and privacy protection, environmental concerns, public health
and well-being, equity issues, and other more global responsibilities.
Given the ever-expanding complexity of the types of ethical decisions that
engineers now confront, traditional approaches to the development of ethical
behavior in engineering students may no longer be sufficient. A dedicated focus
on ethical decision-making within the curriculum of engineering students might
help these professionals avoid ethical lapses in judgment with potentially
serious consequences. The field of engineering is certainly not alone in
grappling with increasingly complex ethical dilemmas that require equally
complex ethical decisionmaking processes, nor are engineering educators the
first to struggle with the question of how best to prepare their students. While
the work of engineers is unique and seemingly very distinctly different from
that of other professions, it may be useful to examine the frameworks that other
professional fields have developed to address the question of how best to
prepare students to make ethical decisions, particularly when confronted with
modern complex ethical dilemmas. The remainder of this paper will review
existing theoretical schema, models, and frameworks in use within the social
sciences, business, discipline-agnostic frameworks, and engineering. The article
concludes with an examination of the relevancy of the frameworks and theories
reviewed here to Engineering Ethics Education.
Review of Frameworks related to Ethical-Decision Making
Social Sciences Frameworks
There are many fields in which ethical decision-making frameworks are already
in place. For example, The Counseling profession’s Code of Ethics [6] mandates
that counselors know and can apply an ethical decision-making model when the
Code of Ethics alone cannot satisfactorily resolve an ethical dilemma. While the
Code falls short of prescribing the use of a specific model, the field of
counseling has several frameworks that have been developed for use when
dilemmas arise, consisting of a methodology for resolving problems effectively
while considering the consequences of each alternative available. Each
framework has a desired ethical outcome and provides steps to assist the
counselor in reaching the desired result. Cottone and Claus reviewed nine
ethical decision-making models developed within the behavioral sciences
published between 1985 and 1998. They concluded that although many of the
models had been developed without theoretical underpinnings, they still have
been found to have great utility within counseling education and practice.
Engineering Frameworks
While there exists several ethics education strategies and interventions, the field
of engineering has limited ethical decision-making framework development
reflected in its literature [25]. In 2013, Sunderland and Ahn proposed a model of
ethical decision-making for engineering students, which intended to highlight
the roles of emotions in decisions that engineering students may not always
recognize [26]. They found that engineering education is focused primarily on
technical knowledge, and emotional knowledge is not explicitly taught. It can
be difficult to make ethics an explicit topic so student engagement and the
recognition of the role of emotions in decision-making is important. Through
problem-based learning, engineering students are encouraged to incorporate
their emotions into their ethical frameworks.
Conclusion
While the field of engineering and higher education has made notable strides in
addressing ethical concerns in its undergraduate curriculum, a relevant, well-
validated model for ethical decision-making specifically designed for use by
engineering educators and students remains elusive. This review of literature
examining theoretical approaches and ethical decision-making frameworks
developed within various disciplines, including social sciences, business,
engineering, and others identified several elements that we believe should be
considered in the design of a framework that would be maximally useful and
effective for undergraduate engineering education.