Mind the gap: Using lessons learned from practicing engineers to teach engineering ethics to undergraduates

Given the range and complexity of ethical dilemmas arising in professional workplaces, engineering educators attempting to bring elements of ethics instruction into their courses and majors must convince undergraduates that discussion cases used for in-class reflection represent reality in the working world. To support this teaching approach, it is often useful to pull in evidence and voices from practicing engineers to lend credibility to engineering ethics discussions. However, our NSF-funded study revealed some surprising results about the ways in which practicing engineers viewed their own perceptions of what ethics are and are not. Thus, if practicing engineers themselves are not quite clear about how to articulate ethical issues, we should wonder how to use their case studies to the best possible end in the classroom. We discovered that a slight shift in vocabulary, speaking of “quality” or “integrity” instead of “ethics” with practicing engineers triggered recognition of ethical dilemmas. Those words resonate with engineers, and we propose that similar shifts in teaching can open up new vistas of understanding and application in undergraduate engineering ethics teaching.