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- Ethics across the curriculum
- Ethics across the curriculum
- Being an ethical job candidate
The following scenario examines whether full disclosure requires that one make known one's personal moral convictions.
3. are you a bleeding-heart pacifist?
Jorge is a pacifist. He is also an unemployed computing professional. Against his better judgment, his wife and friend, Antonio, have talked him into interviewing with Mega Weapons for a new opening working on the guidance systems of non-nuclear missiles. During the interview, the employer remarks that Mega Weapons has had trouble in the past with employees who have moral qualms about working on weapons projects. He then turns to Jorge and asks, “You’re not one of those bleeding-heart pacifists are you?” How should Jorge answer this question?
- Jorge should not reveal his pacifism. It is obvious that this would prejudice Mega Weapons against hiring him. He must try to get the job at all costs.
- Jorge should take the time to explain his pacifism, and how he sees himself fitting into different military projects. For example, he could emphasize his concern and expertise in making weapons guidance systems as accurate as possible to minimize "collatoral" damage during use. He could use this interview to negotiate guidelines for projects that he would find compatible with his convictions.
- Jorge should immediately exit the interview. It is obvious that Mega Weapons would exhibit no sympathy or support for his pacifism.
- Your solution.
Moral conflicts and full and honest disclosure
Consider this analogy
You are a physician on call for Saturday night in a remote country hospital. You receive an emergency call to come immediately and perform, life-saving surgery on a patient in critical condition. The surgery is routine for someone of your skills but the situation for the patient is critical. You can save his life if you act quickly. You speed to the hospital, scrub, suit up and walk into the operating room. There lying unconscious on the operating table is your worst enemy. This is a person whose entire life has been devoted to making you miserable. You have no doubt that if you save his life he will continue to inflict even more suffering on you. You hesitate. You could botch the operation and probably get away with it. But no one else can perform the surgery. You successfully execute the operation and save the patient's life. After all, as a physician you have the obligation to set aside personal issues and feelings and do your duty as a professional to the best of your abilities.
The general consensus is that the doctor is morally, professionally, and even legally obligated to perform the operation. Professionalism, most argue, requires that we set aside personal issues and personal morality and do our duties as professionals. Samuel Florman argues that engineers as professionals have the same duty by analogy. If society asks an engineer to carry out a task that is socially sanctioned and politically validated, then the engineer has the duty to set aside whatever moral or conscience-based objections he or she may have and carry out the engineering activity. So even those who are pacifists and object to weapons projects may have, under the right conditions, the obligation or duty to set aside personal morality and work on the project. Do you think Florman's analogy holds? Put yourself into the position of Jorge? Does he have the obligation to set aside his pacifism as a merely personal belief and carry out his orders as an engineer?
Questions & Answers
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Source:
OpenStax, Ethics across the curriculum modules for eac toolkit workshops. OpenStax CNX. May 07, 2007 Download for free at http://cnx.org/content/col10414/1.2
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