To Be or Not To Be—Ethical That Is!

Throughout recorded history groups of individuals bonded together into organizations to promote their beliefs or to advance their trade or profession. Most of these groups developed rules of behavior to help govern their actions with one another and with other groups of individuals. Engineering as a profession developed in the early to mid 19th century, but it wasn’t until 1914 that ASCE adopted its first Code of Ethics, over 62 years after its founding. This paper briefly reviews the evolution of codes of ethics over time and concludes by describing the recent initiative of some consulting engineering companies to write their own code. The Code of Ethics recently adopted by Clough, Harbour & Associates, LLP (Albany, N.Y.) will be used as an example of the path taken by one consulting engineering firm. Other firms acknowledged the need to go one step further than the codes of ethics that most of its employees, as members of professional societies or organizations, agree to abide by, as a condition of membership, to address special conditions common to their business. Clough, Harbour & Associates goes beyond what the company expects from its employees by including what it will do to encourage and support them in their professional and ethical dealings with the public, their clients, professional societies, and colleagues.