As part of a pioneering team tasked with developing driverless cars for a well-known car-sharing service, I have faced a moral dilemma that challenges my professional integrity. Discovering a critical design flaw that poses a significant risk to pedestrians not only presents a technical challenge but also a moral crisis. Our response to this situation is guided by the IET’s Rules of Conduct and its comprehensive guidance on whistleblowing.
According to the IET’s Rules of Conduct, our primary responsibility is to ensure the safety, health, and welfare of the public in our professional endeavours. The guidance on whistleblowing further clarifies our duties in situations where public safety is at risk due to professional activities. It emphasizes the ethical obligation to report dangerous practices or significant threats to public safety to relevant authorities when internal channels are insufficient or have been exhausted.
In this dire scenario, our team has an unequivocal responsibility: we must blow the whistle. This decision is not optional, but it is a paramount duty to protect lives. The company, when confronted with these findings, has an ethical duty to respond constructively. The ideal response should involve a thorough review of the identified flaws, halting production immediately, and collaborating with relevant authorities and experts to rectify the issues. Any retaliation against the whistleblowing team would contravene the IET’s guidelines broader ethical principles, and potentially legal standards.
Would we, as a team, blow the whistle? Absolutely. The gravity of potentially causing harm, let alone the loss of life, outweighs any reservations about the potential consequences for our careers or the company’s reputation. Adhering to the IET’s ethical framework, our course of action is clear – ensuring the safety of the public is paramount, and we must advocate for the rectification of these critical design flaws before the cars are released. This stance is not just a professional obligation but a moral imperative to uphold the principles of integrity, honesty, and the protection of human life that are central to the engineering profession.
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