Hello World Who is General Failure and why is he reading my drive?

A relatively recent addition to our professional vocabulary “Whistle Blowing” is the term given to outcry against corrupt or incompetent behaviour within an organisation. It came into prominece in the late 1980’s following the Challenger disaster in which a space shuttle exploded shortly after take-off killing all seven crew members including a schoolteacher onboard.

So what does it mean to be ethical? In essence ethical people exhibit three main traits: honesty, integrity and loyalty.

In the early 60’s there was a view of companies that was not all flattering - they were money grubbing greedy and the general public view of them was “pretty untrustworthy”. Companies were essentially lacking corporate integrity. These days companies can see the bigger picture and its worth their while to present a good image to their target audience.

In this post we introduce “Professional Ethics” and the principles behind professional ethics.

But wait… (continuing from before) … the Utilitarian would argue: “If the greater number benefit, what do intentions matter”. But why are intentions important? In this post we’ll discuss Virtue Ethics, Moral Pluralism and Cultural Relativism.

Big words. I know.

My girlfriend is a deontological thinker. I, hower, am utilitarian. Dont get me wrong - neither of us are puritans in any sense of the word. We just have conflicting morals. Today’s discussion draws parallels that she and I have raised against each others thinking:

We begin this episode aboard the Mignonette a yacht making the 15000 mile voyage from Southhampton to Sydney. The year is 1884. The occupants of the leisure craft are under some considerable distress, however, after a rouge wave washed away the lee bulwarks. The crew of four (Tom Dudley, the captain; Edwin Stephens; Edmund Brooks; and cabin boy Richard Parker) quickly abandon the ship in favour of the lifeboat, having bought nothing but themselves and two tins of turnips onboard.

As a part of Professional Engineering in Practice (PEP) we are going to learn about ethics as it relates to engineering. The concepts apply to computer science. Heres a short summary of the lecture lead by Nin Kirkham of UWA. The objective here is to teach professionals about ethical thinking as a part of decision making.

Of the few units I have this semester, I think Project Engineering Practice is going to be one of the better ones. For a start, it has no exam - but more than this, its an industry oriented unit. It’s focused on making us better more productive engineers.