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Engineering Ethics for Professional Engineers: Eight Case Studies

A free 1-PDH ethics course for professional engineers: the duties behind every state's rules of professional conduct, a six-step way to work through a dilemma, and eight case studies from everyday civil and water-resources practice. Graded quiz and certificate.

Learning objectives

• State the duties that appear, in some form, in every US engineering board's rules of professional conduct.
• Apply a repeatable six-step method to an ethical problem in practice.
• Recognize the conduct boards discipline most often: sealing work outside responsible charge, practicing outside competence, undisclosed conflicts of interest, and misleading statements.
• Decide what to do when you find an error in your own sealed, constructed work.

1. Why ethics is part of your license

A professional engineering license is not a reward for passing two exams. It is a grant of trust from the public, made through the state: the public cannot judge whether a culvert is big enough or a retaining wall will stand, so the state lets only licensed people make those judgments, and in return holds them to rules of conduct. Every state board publishes such rules. In North Carolina they are in Section .0700 of the Board rules (21 NCAC 56); other states put them in a code of professional conduct or a code of ethics. Professional societies publish codes of their own, the best known being the NSPE Code of Ethics for Engineers and the ASCE Code of Ethics. Society codes bind members; board rules bind every licensee, and a board can suspend or revoke a license for violating them.

The wording varies from state to state, but the substance does not. Read any of them and you will find the same short list of duties, in roughly this order of priority:

1. Hold paramount the safety, health and welfare of the public. When a client's wishes and the public's safety conflict, the public wins. This is the duty that every other one yields to.
2. Practice only within your competence. Perform and seal only work you are qualified for by education and experience in that specific technical area. A license in civil engineering does not make a pavement engineer competent to design a dam spillway.
3. Be objective and truthful. Reports, statements and testimony must be honest and complete. Leaving out a material fact can mislead as surely as stating a false one.
4. Act as a faithful agent of your employer or client. Disclose any interest that could influence, or appear to influence, your judgment, and avoid conflicts that cannot be managed by disclosure.
5. Keep confidences. Do not reveal a client's or employer's business or technical information without consent, except where the law or the duty to the public requires it.
6. Seal only work prepared under your responsible charge. Your seal says you directed and controlled the work. It is not a stamp you lend out.
7. Uphold the profession. Do not misrepresent your qualifications, do not pay or accept improper inducements for work, and report violations you know of to the board.

Most of the disciplinary cases boards publish each year fall into a handful of these: sealing documents the licensee did not prepare or supervise, practicing in an area outside the licensee's competence, failing to disclose a conflict of interest, negligence in the work itself, and misleading statements, whether in a report, a proposal or a renewal form. Knowing the rules is not usually the problem. Recognizing, in the middle of a deadline, that you are standing in one of those situations is.

2. Standard of care

Ethics and negligence overlap but are not the same. The standard of care is the level of skill and diligence that a reasonably prudent engineer in the same discipline, in the same place and time, would exercise. It is not perfection: an engineer who follows accepted practice and still has a design fail is generally not negligent. It is also not a floor you can contract away: a client who asks you to skip a check that any prudent engineer would make is asking you to fall below the standard, and the signature on the drawings will be yours. Three habits keep you inside it:

• Use the governing criteria, and say which ones. A drainage report that names the manual, edition and design storms it used can be checked. One that does not, cannot.
• Check the work in proportion to the consequence. A check by a second engineer on a parking-lot swale and on a high-hazard dam's spillway are different exercises. Decide how much checking the consequence of a failure deserves, and record that the check happened.
• Write down the decisions. When you accept a risk, change a criterion or rely on someone else's data, a short note to the file made at the time is worth more than any recollection years later.

3. A six-step method for a dilemma

Ethical problems in practice rarely announce themselves. They arrive as a phone call from a client, an email from a contractor, or a number that looks wrong late on a Friday. A fixed method helps you slow down long enough to see the problem clearly.

1. State the facts. What do you actually know, and what are you assuming? Many dilemmas dissolve once the facts are checked.
2. Name the stakeholders. The public, the client, your employer, other engineers, the contractor, the regulator, and you. Who is affected by each option, and how badly?
3. Identify the duties in play. Which of the duties in Section 1 apply? Where do they conflict? Remember the order: the public's safety comes first.
4. List the options, including the ones in between. The choice is seldom "comply or quit": you can ask for time, propose an alternative, put your concern in writing, escalate within your firm, or decline one task while keeping the project.
5. Test each option. Would you be comfortable seeing it described in the newspaper? Could you explain it to the board? Does it rely on something staying secret?
6. Act, and document. Do what you decided, tell the people who need to know, and write it down.

4. Case studies

The cases below are composites written for this course. Each describes an ordinary situation in civil and water-resources practice. Try to reach your own answer before reading the discussion.

Case 1: The spillway the schedule could not afford

Dana, a PE, is designing a stormwater detention pond for a retail site. Her routing shows that in the 100-year storm the water surface comes within 0.3 ft of the top of the embankment, and that an emergency spillway is needed to pass larger storms without overtopping. Below the embankment is a mobile-home park. The developer's project manager calls: the emergency spillway will cost a week of redesign and some parking spaces, the local ordinance only requires routing the 100-year storm, and "the pond passes, so leave it off".

Discussion. Meeting the minimum ordinance is not the same as meeting the standard of care. An embankment that overtops in a storm somewhat larger than the design event can erode and breach, and the people downstream are the public whose safety is paramount. Dana's options are not limited to refusing: she can explain the consequence in writing, show a spillway layout that costs fewer spaces, and point out that the downstream hazard may also bring the pond under state dam-safety rules. What she cannot do is seal a design she believes endangers the downstream residents. If the client will not allow a safe design, she should decline to seal it and record why.

Case 2: The drawings that arrived ready to stamp

Marcus is a PE at a small firm. A contractor he has worked with sends a full set of grading and drainage plans drawn by the contractor's own drafter and asks Marcus to "review and seal" them for a permit, for a flat fee. Marcus did not direct the design, has not been to the site, and the drafter is not licensed and does not work for Marcus.

Discussion. This is the classic seal violation, often called plan stamping. A seal certifies that the work was prepared by the licensee or under the licensee's responsible charge, meaning that the licensee directed and controlled it. A review after the fact is not responsible charge. Marcus can offer to take on the design himself, which means checking the basis of every decision, visiting the site and changing whatever he would have done differently, at which point the work is his. He cannot seal the contractor's work as it stands. Boards discipline plan stamping severely because the permit reviewer, the owner and the public all rely on the seal meaning what it says.

Case 3: The plan review with a family connection

Priya is a PE on contract to a town to review site plans for compliance with its stormwater ordinance. A submittal arrives prepared by the firm where her brother is a principal. She is confident she can review it fairly.

Discussion. The duty is to disclose conflicts that could influence, or appear to influence, judgment. Her confidence in her own objectivity does not remove the appearance, and the town, the applicant's competitors and the public are entitled to a review that is above question. She should tell the town in writing before doing any work on the submittal and let it decide, most likely by assigning the review to someone else. Reviewing it without disclosure would be a violation even if her review were flawless.

Case 4: The spillway outside the specialty

Tom has twenty years of experience as a PE designing commercial building structures. A long-time client owns a farm pond whose principal spillway is failing and asks Tom to design the replacement, since "you're an engineer and we trust you". The dam is regulated by the state dam-safety program.

Discussion. Tom's license is general, but his competence is specific. Spillway design involves hydrology, hydraulics, seepage and embankment stability, with consequences that reach well downstream. Unless Tom has real education and experience in that work, accepting it would be practicing outside his competence. He has good options: refer the client to an engineer experienced in dam work, or join a team with such an engineer who takes responsible charge of the hydraulic and geotechnical design while Tom handles, say, the structural design of the riser. Competence can be gained, through study and work under an experienced engineer; it cannot be assumed.

Case 5: The error found after construction

Two years ago Ana sealed the design of a culvert under a subdivision road. While using the same watershed for a new project she realizes she had used the wrong drainage area for the old culvert: it is undersized, and in a 25-year storm, the design event, the road would overtop by about a foot. No flooding has happened yet. Her firm's managing principal suggests waiting to see whether anyone notices.

Discussion. An engineer who learns that her work endangers the public must act, even when the error is embarrassing and even when it may cost money. Ana should verify the error, then notify the client and the owner of the road (often the state or the town), in writing, with an explanation of the risk and of what can be done about it. If her firm refuses, the duty to the public outranks the duty to the employer; she may need to make the notification herself and, if the hazard is serious and nothing is done, inform the authority with jurisdiction. Waiting until "someone notices" means waiting for the first flood. Most firms carry professional liability insurance for exactly this situation, and insurers generally want to hear about a known error early.

Case 6: The project list that was not quite yours

Leo, a PE, has left a large firm to start his own practice. His first proposal for a county drainage contract lists fourteen "relevant projects", ten of which were done at his former firm, two of them before he joined it and on which he did not work. The proposal does not say where the projects were done.

Discussion. Engineers must not misrepresent their qualifications or their firm's. Listing a former employer's work as the new firm's experience misleads the county about who did it and what the new firm can deliver. Leo can list projects he personally worked on, stating that they were done while he was with his previous firm and describing his own role. The two projects he had no part in do not belong on the list at all. Honest proposals are also good business: a reviewer who calls a reference and learns the truth will not forget it.

Case 7: The certification for work no one watched

Kim, a PE, designed the stormwater ponds for a subdivision. Before the town will release the developer's bond, it needs a certification from the design engineer that the ponds were "constructed in substantial conformance with the approved plans". The developer did not hire Kim for construction observation, and she has not been to the site since grading began. The developer sends an as-built survey and asks her to sign the town's certification form by Friday.

Discussion. A certification is a statement of fact by a licensee, and the town will rely on it to release money held to protect the public. Kim can only certify what she has a basis to know. An as-built survey shows final grades and elevations; it does not show whether the embankment was compacted, whether the outlet pipe has the specified joints and anti-seep collars, or whether the riser was built as detailed. Her honest options are to visit the site and review the survey and whatever construction records exist, then certify only what that supports, worded to say what it is based on; or to decline. Many boards and agencies discourage or prohibit certifying construction an engineer did not observe, and the right time to raise it was when the scope was set: an engineer who designs work that will need a construction certification should say so in the proposal.

Case 8: The report the owner wanted softened

Jordan, a PE, inspects a small earthen dam for its owner, a homeowners' association. The inspection finds seepage with fine sediment exiting at the downstream toe and a sinkhole on the crest, signs that can indicate internal erosion. Jordan's draft report recommends prompt investigation and notes that the conditions should be reported to the state dam-safety program. The association's president asks Jordan to drop the word "sinkhole", move the seepage to an appendix, and remove the reference to the state, because the association is trying to sell lots and fears the cost.

Discussion. Engineers may revise a report for clarity, and owners may correct facts they know better. They may not have findings removed or buried because the findings are inconvenient: a report that omits a material condition misleads every later reader, including buyers downstream. Jordan can offer to discuss the findings, explain the likely costs of investigation, and reword anything that is unclear, but the conditions and the recommendation must stay in the body of the report. Where the dam is regulated and the condition suggests a risk to people downstream, the duty to the public may require that the regulator learn of it; many state dam-safety programs also require owners to report such conditions, and the report should say so. If the association insists, Jordan should not issue the altered report.

5. Responsible charge when software, spreadsheets and AI do the arithmetic

Almost no calculation in modern practice is done by hand. Hydrology runs in a model, pipes are sized in a spreadsheet, retaining walls are checked in a vendor's program, and increasingly a text or code assistant drafts a calculation or a report section. None of this changes who is responsible. The seal certifies that you directed and controlled the work, and that includes every number a tool produced for you. Four practices keep the tools in their place:

• Know what the tool assumes. A spreadsheet that sizes pipes for full flow, a model that ignores tailwater, a program that uses a different edition of a code: each gives a right answer to a question you may not have asked. Read the documentation, and if there is none, open the formulas.
• Check a result independently. Hand-check one representative case, or compare against a different method. An order-of-magnitude check catches most input errors: a 10-acre drainage area carrying 400 cfs should stop you.
• Treat generated text and code as a draft from an unknown author. An AI assistant can produce a plausible paragraph citing a manual section that does not exist, or a formula with a wrong exponent. Verify every citation and every equation before it goes into a sealed document, exactly as you would check the work of a new graduate.
• Protect confidential data. Pasting a client's site data or report into an online tool may disclose it to a third party. Check your client agreement and your firm's policy before you do.

The test is simple: if the board asked you to explain how a number in your sealed calculations was obtained, could you? If the honest answer is "the program said so", the work was not under your responsible charge.

6. Gifts, inducements and political contributions

Engineering work, especially public work, is supposed to go to firms because of their qualifications. The rules of conduct therefore forbid engineers to offer, give, solicit or accept anything of value intended to influence the award of work or a professional decision. The line is easy to see at its ends: a lunch with a client to discuss a project is ordinary business; a cash payment to a public official to get on a shortlist is a crime as well as a violation. The middle is where judgment is needed:

• From contractors and suppliers: an engineer who specifies products or reviews contractors' work should not accept gifts or trips from the people whose products or work they judge. Many public agencies set a strict dollar limit; when in doubt, decline or disclose.
• Contingent fees: paying a third party a fee contingent on winning a public engineering contract is prohibited in most states and under federal procurement rules.
• Political contributions: contributions made to influence the award of a contract are prohibited, and many jurisdictions restrict or require disclosure of contributions from firms seeking public work. Know your state's rules before you or your firm contributes to a campaign for an office that awards your work.
• Qualifications-based selection: most public agencies select engineers on qualifications first and negotiate the fee second, under the federal Brooks Act and similar state laws. Undercutting a competitor by offering free work, or by revising a fee after seeing another firm's, undermines that system and is restricted by many state rules.

A useful test: would you be comfortable if the gift, payment or contribution, and the work that followed, appeared side by side in the local newspaper? If not, do not do it.

7. What your seal certifies, and what it does not

The seal is the point where ethics becomes paperwork, so it is worth being precise about it. State laws differ in detail, but in general a seal, signature and date on a document certify that the document was prepared by you or under your responsible charge, and that you take professional responsibility for it. Several practical rules follow:

• Seal only what you control. If a drawing set includes sheets by another discipline or another firm, each licensee seals the sheets they are responsible for. A general note that one engineer "reviewed" the rest does not transfer responsibility.
• Revisions need a seal too. When a sealed document is changed, the change has to be sealed and dated by the licensee responsible for it. If someone else revises your sealed drawing after you hand it over, that person, not you, must take responsibility for the change, and the document should show who changed what.
• Preliminary documents are marked as such. Drafts and documents not intended for construction or permitting should carry a clear note, often "preliminary, not for construction", rather than a seal that a reader could mistake for final approval. Check your board's rule: several prescribe the wording.
• Electronic seals carry the same weight. A digital seal and signature are acceptable in most states if they are under your exclusive control and the document cannot be altered without detection. Leaving an image of your seal on a shared drive where others can paste it into documents is a serious failure of that control.
• Your seal stays yours when you change jobs. Documents you sealed at a former employer remain your responsibility. A new employer cannot use your seal, and you cannot keep sealing work for your former firm that you no longer control.

8. Records that protect the public and you

Good records are part of practicing ethically: they let another engineer check your work, they let you answer the board's questions years later, and they are often what separates an honest mistake from negligence in the eyes of a reviewer. For each project, keep at least:

• the scope you agreed to, and any change to it, in writing;
• the criteria and data you used, with their sources and dates: manuals and editions, survey, geotechnical data, rainfall data, and any data the client supplied;
• calculations, including the inputs and versions of any software, and evidence that they were checked;
• notes of decisions that departed from the criteria, or that accepted a risk, with the reason;
• written records of any concern you raised with a client or employer, and of the answer.

Keep your own continuing-education records too. Most boards audit a random sample of licensees each year and require you to produce certificates and a log of the activities you claimed, often for several renewal cycles back. In North Carolina the licensee must keep the records, and must indicate on the log which activity is claimed for the ethics or rules of professional conduct requirement.

9. Reporting and the duty to speak

Most rules of conduct require a licensee who knows of a violation by another licensee, or of an unlicensed person practicing engineering, to report it to the board. Most also require an engineer whose professional judgment is overruled in a way that endangers the public to notify the appropriate authority. These duties are uncomfortable, and the rules recognize it: the report goes to the board, which investigates; your job is to give it the facts, not to act as judge. Before reporting a colleague, it is often right, and sometimes enough, to raise the problem with them directly. It is never right to stay silent about a danger to the public because speaking up is awkward.

10. Summary

• Your license is a public trust; the public's safety, health and welfare come before the client, the employer and you.
• Work only within your competence, and seal only work done under your responsible charge.
• Disclose conflicts, including ones that only appear to influence you, before you do the work.
• Be truthful in reports, proposals and testimony, including by not leaving out what matters.
• When you find an error that endangers the public, act promptly and in writing.
• Software and AI tools do arithmetic, not engineering: verify what they produce before you seal it.
• Never give or accept anything of value meant to influence the award of work or a professional decision.
• Use a method: facts, stakeholders, duties, options, tests, then act and document.

References: your state board's rules of professional conduct (North Carolina: 21 NCAC 56, Section .0700); NSPE Code of Ethics for Engineers; ASCE Code of Ethics. Check your own board's rules: wording and specific requirements differ between states.

Final quiz

10 questions. You need 70% to pass. You can retake it as many times as you need.