Are Engineers at the Top of their Profession More Interested in Engineering Ethics?
It has been widely observed that there are few professional rewards for engineers for contributing to the discussion and advancement of engineering ethics, with the resulting danger that the subject will be dominated by humanities scholars, who themselves find more professional rewards in reading and writing for other humanities scholars that learning about engineering practice and research and the standards of practice relevant to it. Nonetheless, in my observation, engineers at the top of their profession are much more likely to be interested and informed about the ethics of their field, perhaps because they are satisfied with their personal achievements. If so, such engineers may provide the leadership in engineering ethics to keep it relevant to engineering. What has been your experience about the interest among engineers in developing engineering ethics?