Your interest as a lawyer or claims manager

You as a civil litigation lawyer or insurance claims manager have a big interest in the objectivity of the experts you retain and the opinions they render.  Ethics is an element in objectivity.  Knowing the sources of pressure on objective and ethical conduct – the bottom line is one source – guards against compromise.  Educating professional people early in their career on these issues would seem to be a good idea.

Reader’s comments on initial posting

This update reflects informative comment from three readers of the initial posting on this topic published September 17, 2012.  The initial item expressed concern – after I read two articles in an engineering periodical, about the pressure on professional engineers to do good work when being retained by others whose objective is to make money.

Professor Chris MacDonald, who blogs on business ethics, and is widely and well regarded, noted that the “problem of the employed professional” is a standard one in all the textbooks on professional ethics.  One business ethics course that he used to teach spent a couple of weeks on the problem (C. MacDonald, Phd).

Ms. Barbara Bleasdale, who lectured in a school of nursing on the east coast for more than 25 years, thinks the bottom line rules in healthcare decisions as well….and the ethical dilemma causes some nurses to leave the profession as they are not always supported in doing the right thing (B. Bleasdale, RN).

Dr. John Hughes, a retired consulting professional engineer, noted the size of the larger consulting firms today – many, many 100s of professional engineers as opposed to a few dozen a few decades ago.  He is of the view – shared by a senior colleague, John Ackerly, P.Eng. who consults to large international firms, that this does not promote responsibility for good design.  The company and it’s employed engineers are essentially sheltered behind the limited company rules.  Basically, one has to return to the small, “private company” in which each professional engineer takes responsibility for the success of the firm, including the professionalism exhibited by the employed engineer (J. Hughes, Phd).

The problem of the “employed engineer” is particularly relevant in forensic engineering.  Ethics is an element in the objectivity we must bring to our engineering investigations, and to the judicial system when we are called as experts – witness civil procedures Rule 55 in Nova Scotia.

Updated initial posting

I was initially taken by two articles in the Fall Newsletter of APENS, The Engineer, that could be summarized by the following comments: “…engineers found guilty of misconduct...” and “…skills engineering schools should teach“.

The article about skills caught my attention first.  It was entitled, The Top 5 Skills Engineering Schools Should Teach, and was written by Natalie Cornelius, P.Eng. It was admirable that Natalie took time to draw attention to skills practicing engineers need and to initiate a discussion about these.  I agree with some of what Natalie writes but not all.  She identifies the following skills:

1. Written communicatoin
2. Attention to detail
3. Networking, and/or how to call someone you barely know and get information
4. Skillful negotiation
5. Flexibility and adaptability

I agree wholeheartedly with the first, believe the second is being addressed well enough in university now – maybe too much, and believe the remaining three are not fundamental enough for a university program in engineering.

I believe a skill that Natalie might have included was Verbal Communication.  I also believe – and this has been reinforced by the responses to my initial posting, that the awareness of engineers should be raised, as soon as possible in their careers, about professional ethics and the pressures on these.  My list of skills might look like the following:

1. Written communication
2. Verbal communication
3. Professional ethics

The reason for my views on the article are beyond the scope of this posting.  But, I do think Natilie’s views on engineering curriculum could have been even more helpful if her article had also reflected the results of interviews with senior engineers in engineering disciplines, fields of practice, and life experiences other than her own.  Experienced practicing engineers of all stripes have a lot to offer the universities on what they might be doing.

The article about engineers found guilty caught my attention second.  It was entitled, Engineers who declared Lake Algo Centre Mall structurally sound, found guilty of misconduct in 2010.  This is the Elliot Lake Mall that collapsed and that I blogged about a few weeks ago (Cause of roof collapse at Elliot Lake, published July 10, 2012).  The article in the APENS newsletter was originally published in The Globe and Mail on Saturday, July 14, 2012.

It was encouraging to see APENS carry this item about professional engineers who appear to have slipped up

It’s interesting that the engineer’s misconduct had something to do with engineering design and inspection.  These were areas that I thought in my blogging were deserving of hypothesizing, particularly construction inspection.

I can’t help but think of the pressure some practicing engineers are under to do the right thing in their work.  Few if any knowingly do wrong but we are human and occasionally let our guard down and inadvertently do the wrong thing.

Those of us who are in private consulting practice learn early on to be careful of some clients – I could identify but won’t, who leverage the smallest amounts of capital to dizzying levels, and the professional engineers who are under pressure to produce inexpensive designs and are swept along in this leveraging.

I’ve thought for some time – months if not two or three years, about the subtle pressure professional engineers are under who work for commercial firms and fiscally responsible bureaucracies where the bottom line rules.  Some of these organizations are up to a 1,000 strong in professional staff.  Most professional engineers work for small and large organizations like these.  To some extent, engineering professionalism is threatened by the tyranny of the bottom line.

This conflict between the bottom line and professionalism has troubled me enough that I’ve thought to suggest to Chris MacDonald that he blog about ethics in the professions.  Chris is a professor at Ryerson University in Toronto, formerly with Saint Mary’s University, who blogs about business ethics.  Chris is extremely well recognized world wide in his field.  I think professional ethics is a fertile field for a chap like him with his insight and knowlege.  As noted above, it turns out that “the problem of the employed professional” has been recognized at universities, at least by business schools, and that Chris has taught a course on this subject.

In any event, to wrap this up, and get back to the two articles I saw in the APENS newsletter, I think a course worthy of an engineering curriculum would be one on professional ethics and the pressures on these ethics in our society.

Relevance to forensic engineering

Some of the young engineers will practice forensic engineering after they get a few decades of experience under their belts.  I can tell you that ethics plays a particularly important role in forensic engineering.  There is not a little pressure on a professional engineer to advocate for the client.  There is also the normal pressure of a human being identifying with the underdog after the cause of a failure is known.  These pressures threaten the professional engineer’s need to be objective as required by the courts.  A course in ethics would raise the young engineer’s awareness of these pressures and help him/her resist them.

References

1. Cause of the roof collapse at Elliot Lake.  Blog posted July 10, 2012
2. Professional ethics and the tyranny of the bottom line.   Blog posted September 17, 2012
3. C. MacDonald, Phd, Ryerson University, Toronto
4. B. Bleasdale, RN, Halifax
5. J. Hughes, Phd, Vancouver