When Ethics is a Technical Matter: Engineers’ Strategic Appeal to Ethical Considerations in Advocating for System Integrity

Abstract

Situated in critiques of the "moral muteness" of technical rationality, we examine concepts of ethics and the avoidance of ethical language among Australian gas pipeline engineers. We identify the domains in which they saw ethics as operating, including public safety, environmental protection, sustainability, commercial probity, and modern slavery. Particularly with respect to ethical matters that bear on public safety, in the course of design and operational activities, engineers principally advocated for action using technical language, avoiding reference to potential consequences such as death or destruction of property. Within their organizations, they saw themselves as occupying a technical "line of defense". We argue that this focus on technical language is action-oriented. Ethics tells practitioners of unacceptable outcomes, but it does not guide them in what they need to do to avoid that outcome in practice. We observed some cases where engineers had not made the connection between their role and ethics in the sense of public safety. We argue that muteness on ethical matters can obscure the nature of the risk where technical advice is being taken on by non-technical actors, and where technical actors themselves do not have a clear sense of their public safety obligations.

“It’s the Seeing and Feeling”: How Embodied and Conceptual Knowledges Relate in Pipeline Engineering Work

“…In terms of articulating a judgment in writing or in conversation with peers, what involves an embodied way of knowing needs to be developed and translated into a technical artifact. Especially with respect to risk controls, the engineers say they avoid referring to a potential physical threat to others in terms of death and destruction when making the case for expenditure on a design feature or remedial action (Maslen et al 2021 ). Imagining the disaster, the physical experience of it, is internal.…”

The Undone Ethics of Engineering Ethics

“…Perhaps the most prominent conversation within the engineering ethics community is precisely where engineering ethics should be housed [21], [23], [24], [25], [26], [27]. At some institutions, engineering ethics is housed in the humanities or liberal arts, typically history, philosophy, or sociology courses [19], while others house it within engineering.…”