President's Column
(April 2002)

Focus on Ethics 

Because of Enron and Andersen, many people are now focusing on ethics in the workplace. This opportunity lets us reflect on ethics in our own careers and personal lives. In some cases, we have to know the law to know what is strictly ethical. Otherwise, it's usually a matter of common sense.

I remember working on a project for a defense company when our management cut the engineers' labor estimates to submit a competitive bid. We got the job, but the original engineering estimates were correct — leaving many of us to work overtime without pay to complete the design on time and within budget. And I'm talking about at least 20 hours a week overtime for a large group of engineers. Does this sound familiar?

So, one case of ethics might be a company requiring people to work overtime without pay to make money for the stockholders. Although this practice approaches abuse, I understand it is not illegal, and is a typical way to do business. In the meantime, a Defense Department audit found that the engineers were working 60 hours per week, while the proposal called for a per-hour rate bid of 40 hours per week. Apparently, this discrepancy was against the law.

The government then modified its payments to the company for this and other projects based upon taking the average number of hours worked per week and averaging the per-hour bid across 60 hours instead of 40. So, management instructed us to put only 40 hours on our time cards, regardless of the number of hours we worked overtime without pay. As loyal employees we did as told, although I did protest to my supervisor. After all, with this process management had lost sight of how much overtime the engineers had worked.

I later understood that we were not only enabling the company to break the law, but also engaging in unethical conduct. In this particular case, most of us were innocent — because we didn't have enough information to know why we were being asked to do this, or that a law was even involved.

As far as I know, the company wasn't caught and our bid rates eventually returned to normal because of how management treated the time cards. A few years later, though, management did get into trouble when it required employees to charge work on one project to another project to avoid cost overruns.

So — do yourself a favor and explore the code of ethics for professional engineers and engineering organizations like the IEEE. In addition, use common sense. If you're asked to hide design weaknesses or erroneously fill out time cards or financial reports, realize that you're being asked to engage in unethical, and possibly illegal, behavior. The career you save may be your own.