Ethics, risk communication and the culture of engineering

As modern technology becomes more complex the assessment of environmental and safety risks likewise becomes more complex, lending itself to an increasing array of moral issues and dilemmas. By virtue of their significant role in the process of technological development, engineers are inevitably involved, directly or indirectly, in risk assessment and risk management and, hence, must be prepared to wrestle with the accompanying moral issues.The evolution of engineering codes of ethics reflects a growing acknowledgement on the part of professional engineering societies that engineers have both a professional and a moral responsibility for the public safety, health and welfare. In addition, the engineer's responsibility for the public safety and welfare extends to informing the public about technology, its applications and its consequences in a more general sense. Moreover, their responsibility to the public requires that engineers themselves be informed with respect to non-technical perspectives on technology, including a sensitivity to and respect for the differences between expert and non-expert perception of risk. Risk communication efforts will not go very far if engineers persist in dismissing public perceptions of risk, responding to over-simplified notions of what the public wants, and utilizing quantitative methods to camouflage their own value judgments. There is thus both a practical necessity and an ethical imperative for engineers to become actively engaged in risk communication efforts that incorporate an understanding of and respect for public perception of risk. This calls for nothing less than a transformation of the `culture of engineering,' including an integration of technical concepts with concepts drawn from the humanities and social sciences. A meaningful transformation in the engineering culture will require substantive institutional changes, especially in schools of engineering, and the development of `moral imagination' by individual engineers.