Innovation September-October 2013

e t h i c s

TESTING DECISIONS Ethics in Practice

Dr. Allison Dempsey, LLM

It has been said that life is a series of tests. In engineering and geoscience, tests are frequently used to establish quality, performance or reliability. For practising professionals, tests are also found in challenging or difficult situations that reveal their own or someone else’s strength or quality of character.

APEGBC members and licensees encounter both kinds of tests— whether they are in the field, overseeing or reporting on operations, managing projects, designing applications, or active in the numerous other ways they apply their scientific and technical knowledge, training and expertise. Testing for Quality, Performance and Reliability Every day, APEGBC members and licensees are trusted with work that involves inherent risk to public welfare, health and safety, the natural and increasingly the technological environment. This is because the public recognizes that engineering and geoscience professionals possess a combination of education, experience, training and judgment that gives them the ability to engage in such work while at the same time safeguarding them against such risks. This ability and necessary confidence is rooted in the practice of testing and verifying everything from initial observations, assumptions and calculations to findings, recommendations and processes. This approach is characteristic of scientific education and training that focuses on inquiry and problem solving. Its purpose is the same whether it is beta testing a new operating platform, verifying ore assay results for a mining operation, or strength testing in a construction project: ensuring that the quality, performance or reliability of the test subject meets or exceeds acceptable standards. Judgment and Conduct Under Pressure Due to the nature of their work, members and licensees are often required to make decisions and to act independently of consultation and supervision at times under considerable pressure. Increasingly, the projects and processes they are engaged in involve the challenge of finding a way to balance economic benefit and productivity with paramount concerns for human safety, public welfare and environmental protection. Often this occurs within a context of competing and/or conflicting public and private interests, contentious issues, media scrutiny, rapid development and technological change, and economic, industry and political pressure

that highlight the serious economic, environmental, social and public policy considerations and consequences for decisions and actions. The ability of engineering and geoscience professionals to bring their experience, integrity, and judgment to bear in such circumstances is grounded in a disciplined process for issue framing and decision making that is as important as it is in the more technical aspects of their work. Again, it is a combination of knowledge, experience, integrity and judgment that ensures that even those decisions made in difficult circumstances are sound, defensible and can withstand technical, legal and professional scrutiny. The latter consideration is an important one because across the range of activities they are involved in, professionally and otherwise, APEGBC members and licensees are required to conduct themselves according to a high standard of ethics and conduct that is a condition of acceptance into and continued membership in their profession. Members and licensees shall act at all times with fairness, courtesy and good faith to their associates, employers, employees and clients, and with fidelity to the public needs. They shall uphold the values of truth, honesty and trustworthiness and safeguard human life and welfare and the environment. APEGBC Code of Ethics Is it Ethical? Laws and regulations have evolved to establish formal baselines, limits and minimum standards for acceptable and lawful activity in a wide range of areas. However, to meet the higher standards set out in the APEGBC Code of Ethics, members and licensees must ensure their decisions and actions not only satisfy the rigours of scientific and technical testing and pass the compliance test that asks, “Is it legal?”, but also pass the test that asks, “Is it ethical?”

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