A question of credibility

The issue of credibility, which is crucial to the status of the engineering profession, will come under increasingly intense scrutiny and controversy in the months and years ahead. If our competence can be successfully questioned and our professional ethics bent and distorted, then we will soon become the handmaidens of any number of outside alien interests and pressures. Furthermore, our independence and integrity will be undermined and our authority diminished. Protecting our hard-won and irreplaceable professional credibility, therefore, becomes a matter of the utmost priority. We must answer our critics rationally, firmly, and irrefutably. We must continue to work to strengthen our professional practices and code of ethics. And perhaps the most important, we must stimulate widespread debate and discussion among our members on what steps we can take to maintain the high prestige and respect traditionally accorded the engineering profession.