Decoding Engineering Ethics

Robert Kirkman, PhD, Associate Professor Ga Tech, Jimmy & Rosalynn Carter School of Public Policy will give the featured presentation on Decoding Professional Ethics at the Monday, October 13th, 6 pm monthly dinner meeting of the Georgia Society of Professional Engineers. The discussion will include how people often have the wrong idea about ethics. They hope for and expect that ethics is like a failsafe decision making machine reliably producing “the do the right thing” instructions for any set of inputted circumstances. A professional code of ethics seems to do this, but ethics is really something else. Such codes are useful reminders of community expectations but cannot be the sole source of responsible professional practice. Dr. Kirkman will talk about. some of those additional sources, including not only moral theory but also more basic ways of paying attention to others.