Exploring how students might recognize and react to ethical dilemmas, and what the consequence of both action and inaction are, allows students to explore the notion of uncertainty in engineering situations.
This is particularly important because engineering students need to become comfortable with ambiguity, learning that there is no single ‘best way’ which happens when the ‘right’ principles are applied (Pfatteicher 2001, Rabins 1998).
Understanding the nature of the professional responsibilities associated with these issues is also critical in moving discussion beyond personal responsibilities to consider the responsibilities that they will hold as a professional engineer—as Schlossberger (1995) notes, engineers do not act as individuals, but from a position of public trust.
Considering the wider and temporal nature of ethical actions and responsibilities allows students to consider whether the impact of their professional activities will be felt in the near or far future; and whether they would respond differently to a similar situation in several years’ time.
This follows the recommendations of institutions such as the Delft University of Technology who advocate that future engineers be capable of envisioning the ethical consequences of the actions in the context of their future professional activities (Scheurwater and Doorman 2001).
Finally, by considering the location of these activities students can explore whether there is anything more, or less, ethical about them occurring as part of their working professional lives and thus prepare students for being able to identify ethical issues within their own workplace (Lincourt and Johnson 2004).
When facilitating the discussions around these questions it is also important to draw on concepts and language that are used in everyday life when talking about moral problems (Harris et al. 1996), such as ‘‘drawing the line’’ to describe which actions are acceptable and unacceptable, and ‘‘conflict’’ when talking about how individuals can be pulled in different directions by competing considerations.