Code Of Ethics And Design: Ethical Issues In Design

Ethical Issues in Design

There are many obstacles to coming up with a good design for engineers. Taking an ethical approach, one should be able to assume that the design they asked for was given due diligence and put together by a team of professional engineers who live by the Code of Ethics for their professional organization.

One main item that could affect design is the concept of liability. In today’s day and age, organizations are quick to lay blame on an individual instead of looking at process improvement. For example, a manufacturing organization that identifies how to improve processes to avoid/correct seeing defects would strengthen the loyalty of its workers vs. one that identifies individuals to blame. Most new design is reviewed

In his paper “Columbia and Challenger: Organizational Failure at NASA,” Joseph Lorenzo Hall cites two issues common to both accidents: “Normalization of Deviance,” and influences of hierarchy (Hall, 2003).

Normalization of Deviance is a way of describing that deviant actions are accepted as norm, for example the foam falling from the booster vehicle and striking the space shuttle during launch. There are many documented cases of the protective foam striking the shuttle and leaving holes in the structure of the craft that did not cause a catastrophic failure of the mission. NASA does not appear to have any sort of process improvement program that calls for rectifying items that the untrained eye would identify as a serious issue. Identifying a more effective way to secure the foam pieces to the launch vehicle, or calling for an inspection of the shuttle after making orbit and providing adequate equipment and materials to make a repair would be an easy way to resolve the falling foam

In both cases, it was an acceptable business risk to proceed at caution by upper management. So the engineers and managers in lower positions took that as law (with a few objectors). These objectors later gained fame due to the catastrophes. Upper management has taken on a mindset of wanting to see proof of failure. When the engineers could not come up with proof, their concerns were dismissed as not creditable. Perhaps a program that allows workers to protest and not work in a chilled work environment would have given those engineers the voice they needed to cause NASA to take a second look at both shuttles prior to launch.

The blame for both accidents lies with NASA culture. NASA does not give enough credit to the concerns of more junior engineers, and they continue to allow a chilled work environment to exist since no one stands up to the unreasonable demands of politicians or upper management. NASA also needs to take a serious objective look at what it considers “normal and acceptable,” and improve those questionable items (e.g. conducting the launch on a cold