Matthew Kelly

EE/CPRE 394

Ethics Essay

Ethics has always been a subject mentioned in schools, and discussed briefly. Cheating

and stealing of other peoples work happens frequently in a high school setting, and at the time it

may not seem like an important issue. There are ethical codes that students are expected to

follow and it is not held to as much importance as it should be in schools below the college level,

as in industry and the college setting it is extremely important.

I feel that the purpose of having a Code of Ethics is to provide and promote a high

standard for everyone to follow. It makes sure that people who do research and publish their

results, receive credit for the work they have put in to promote knowledge in the field. Some

more of the reasons that people should follow a Code of Ethics, starts in my mind with the idea

that it should make the quality of work increase. For example, number 3 of the IEEE Code of

Ethics talks about how data should be interpreted realistically. Number 7 in the IEEE Code of

Ethics mentions both that one should be accepting of criticism and provide criticism on technical

work, and to credit those that contributed to the work. Codes of Ethics also promote equality, as

all people should be doing, and make sure that people keep the safety of others in mind when

doing technical work. The work that myself or any of my other classmates could be doing in the

future could have a large impact on the safety of others, and keeping that fact in mind is

necessary when working on a project. All these reasons and many more show the need of

having/following a Code of Ethics.

I have already and I am sure in the future that I will be placed in an ethical situation.

Many times, they can be quite challenging to figure out what should be done. To decide on my

course of action there are many things that I do. I first ask questions, I have always been
someone to ask why to many requests made of me. The reason for this is not that I want to be

difficult, but I want to understand why I am doing a specific task. I would ask others about the

situation if it is something that I can share with others. The answers to my questions are the first

thing that I consider when making a decision. Next, I think of the consequences of doing an

action. My times what someone is asked to do is a small issue and there may not be any

consequences, or anything that are seen, but for larger issues the consequences could include

being fired, injuries to others, the loss of respect among others, and countless others. I try to put

aside what is best for myself in many situations as it does not always align with the correct

decision to make. I may do some research if the situation calls for a deeper understand in

information that I am not knowledgeable about. And finally, I decide on the situation based on

the knowledge I have at the time. While this process may take some time, and there is not always

that convenience, I hold ethics very highly. If time is an issue, I do my best to take through

something so that I can be confident that what I am doing is the correct decision. In all, the

factors that I like to way include safety of others, ethics of the situation, thoughts of others,

consequences of my decision, importance of the issue, and the view point of the point that I work

with and work for, just to name a few. Next, a case study will be analyzed both from my view

point and from others that also shared their thoughts on the situation.

The case study that we were offered involved the car company Volkswagon (VW), faking

results of a system that control pollutants released by some of their diesel engines. I believed this

was because of software written that faked the results to pass inspection. This issue went on for a

while before a third party ran tests and caught the error that VW has be disregarding. Another

issue was by the amount that they failed the test in this instance as well, compared to the

standards that they were supposed to be performing at. Lastly, the higher ups in the company
tried to pin this on some of the people that wrote the code. The question that Professor Zambreno

proposed was, if your manager came and asked you to write the code to do this specific

function, would you do it? Some of the first people to respond said that they would not do it,

but that is because of the information that they know now. Next, people said that they would

probably ask questions as to why they wanted this, and ask some of the people even higher than

their own manager to try to figure out why they were writing the code. And if they knew that

they were going to just do this to fake results, then they would not write the code. I felt that this

was a good plan to start with. But, what if they were convinced that what they were doing was

okay and it would be fixed later. I thought a good scenario would be for someone writing this

code is under an assumption like they needed this code to be written so that other could continue

with further testing of other systems while someone else continued to work to fix this issue. This

seems like a scenario that could have taken place. If I was the person that wrote the code and

found out that it was being used in the actual release in the car, either by testing myself, or

asking a manager or higher up in the company this would cause another ethical issue. Now I

would and my group thought that we would ask many more questions and try to figure out why

we have not fixed this issue. The amount of pollutant being released was not okay with the

people in my group and I agree. Some opinions would be to risk your job to try to fix the issue,

and if that was tell an outside source to fix the issue than that should be done. No one in my

group wanted to be responsible for an issue like this one, and everyone felt it should be fixed.

Another thing we talked about in my group was the idea that the people who were in a position

of more power within the company had to know about this issue and the fact that they tried to pin

something like this on the software writers was wrong to do. While they were to blame, I fell
much of the blame must be put on management in this scenario as they should have handled the

scenario differently.

With respect to the issue above I felt that my group and I had many of the same views on

the case study. We all viewed the code as an ethical issue and something that maybe should not

have been written. We all thought that if placed in the same scenario that we would not have

handled the situation in the same way. I feel that my viewpoint differed in the perspective that I

tried to put myself in the situation without the knowledge of what I just read. It can be easy to

say that I would not do something knowing what happened because of it, but to really put

yourself in the shoes of the person or people that were asked to write the code is harder to do. At

one point, they were all students who, like us, figured they would not do that very bad thing that

put them in the situation they were a part of. I felt that the thought on the scenario of the group

matched mine when we thought in this way. In the end, we all came to the consensus that we

would try to be the people that would ask questions and find a way to get this issue resolved

either by telling an outside source or just asking enough and taking initiative to solve the

problem at hand.

Three virtues that I fell relate to this case study include integrity, honesty, and

responsibility. Integrity because many people had to know that what they were doing was wrong

and no one did anything to fix it. They were found out by a third party and then had to come

clean. The integrity of many at VW had to be questioned. Honesty in the fact that the company

was lying about the results of tests that they were taking which violates the IEEE Code of Ethics

that I talked about earlier. They also did not exercise fairness after the fact as more people should

have taken responsibility for the spotlight that was put upon the company. Lastly, responsibility

mainly as it involved accountability. I am sure that many could have been accountable for the
code and the decision to write it, and the decision to not fix it. The deadline could have been fast

approaching, but that is an issue that should have caused a delay. They did not recognize their

obligation to act for the good of others. I choose the three values because they are the three that I

feel are most important to me, and the three that can be most related to what we read. The other

issues are less relevant because of this scenario. This did not involve charity and self-discipline

to name a few. While it does involve fidelity to ones company, the other three had more of an

impact if I were to talk about why what they did was wrong in terms of the people that made this

event happen. I feel that there are more ethical virtues that could be applied to this issue because

of its magnitude. So much was wrong, and other virtues could be applied. For example,

something that could be applied is the idea that people accept a range of consequences when

deciding. While certain people may have viewed this as something they will not do, maybe some

viewed this as not an issue at first. While I am not positive this is a specific virtue I think that this

idea could be applied to this situation and many more.

Ethics is an important thing to keep in mind when doing any sort of work. I want to be

the person that make sure everything we are doing aligns with the correct practice and ethics of

the situation. Having/following a Code of Ethics, following a process when making an ethical

decision, and reading about other ethical issues, is important as it helps myself and others

understand a wider variety of situations that we could be put in during our career.
 Works Cited

"IEEE Code of Ethics." IEEE. IEEE, n.d. Web. 17 Nov. 2016.