Situation 1 Physical Address Omission Ethical Violation
P · Principle
Individual
http://proethica.org/ontology/case/128#Situation_1_Physical_Address_Omission_Ethical_Violation
Properties
Instance of
BusinessCardMailingAddressDisclosureObligationinMulti-StatePractice
http://proethica.org/ontology/intermediate#BusinessCardMailingAddressDisclosureObligationinMulti-StatePractice
Applied to
Engineer A Situation 1 Multi-Jurisdiction Business Card Presenter
Balancing with
Honesty in Professional Representations
Technically True But Misleading Statement Prohibition
Concrete expression
Engineer A's business card in Situation 1 omits a physical address, creating an unresolvable ambiguity about which state's licensure the PE designation refers to, rendering the card ethically unacceptable
Confidence
0.93
Importance
high
Interpretation
The absence of a physical address prevents recipients from applying the conventional address-licensure inference and thus prevents them from determining whether the engineer is licensed in their jurisdiction — this ambiguity itself constitutes a form of deception by omission
Invoked by
NSPE Board of Ethical Review
Tension resolution
The Board resolves this by treating the omission of an address as ethically impermissible regardless of intent, because it creates the conditions for public misunderstanding about licensure status
Source Evidence
Source text
The business card in Situation (1) does not identify a physical address, and for this reason the scenario is not acceptable
Text references
The business card in Situation (1) does not identify a physical address, and for this reason the scenario is not acceptable
to avoid confusion or any appearance of deception about licensure, business cards should identify a physical address for the engineer
TTL
@prefix case128: <http://proethica.org/ontology/case/128#> .
@prefix owl: <http://www.w3.org/2002/07/owl#> .
@prefix proeth: <http://proethica.org/ontology/intermediate#> .
@prefix prov: <http://www.w3.org/ns/prov#> .
@prefix rdfs: <http://www.w3.org/2000/01/rdf-schema#> .
@prefix xsd: <http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#> .
case128:Situation_1_Physical_Address_Omission_Ethical_Violation a proeth:BusinessCardMailingAddressDisclosureObligationinMulti-StatePractice,
owl:NamedIndividual ;
rdfs:label "Situation 1 Physical Address Omission Ethical Violation" ;
proeth:appliedto "Engineer A Situation 1 Multi-Jurisdiction Business Card Presenter" ;
proeth:balancingwith "Honesty in Professional Representations",
"Technically True But Misleading Statement Prohibition" ;
proeth:conceptCategory "Principle" ;
proeth:concreteexpression "Engineer A's business card in Situation 1 omits a physical address, creating an unresolvable ambiguity about which state's licensure the PE designation refers to, rendering the card ethically unacceptable" ;
proeth:confidence "0.93" ;
proeth:discoveredincase "128" ;
proeth:discoveredinpass "2" ;
proeth:discoveredinsection "discussion" ;
proeth:firstdiscoveredat "2026-02-28T22:02:21.234939+00:00" ;
proeth:firstdiscoveredincase "128" ;
proeth:generatedattime "2026-02-28T22:02:21.234939+00:00" ;
proeth:importance "high" ;
proeth:interpretation "The absence of a physical address prevents recipients from applying the conventional address-licensure inference and thus prevents them from determining whether the engineer is licensed in their jurisdiction — this ambiguity itself constitutes a form of deception by omission" ;
proeth:invokedby "NSPE Board of Ethical Review" ;
proeth:principleclass "Business Card Mailing Address Disclosure Obligation in Multi-State Practice" ;
proeth:sourcetext "The business card in Situation (1) does not identify a physical address, and for this reason the scenario is not acceptable" ;
proeth:tensionresolution "The Board resolves this by treating the omission of an address as ethically impermissible regardless of intent, because it creates the conditions for public misunderstanding about licensure status" ;
proeth:textreferences "The business card in Situation (1) does not identify a physical address, and for this reason the scenario is not acceptable",
"to avoid confusion or any appearance of deception about licensure, business cards should identify a physical address for the engineer" ;
proeth:wasattributedto "Case 128 Extraction" ;
prov:generatedAtTime "2026-02-28T22:14:48.658527"^^xsd:dateTime ;
prov:wasGeneratedBy "ProEthica Case 128 Extraction" .
Metadata
Extraction details
Discovered in case
128
Discovered in pass
2
Discovered in section
discussion
First discovered
2026-02-28T22:02:21.234939+00:00
First case
128
Generated
2026-02-28T22:02:21.234939+00:00
Attributed to
Case 128 Extraction
Generated
2026-02-28T22:14:48.658527
Generated by
ProEthica Case 128 Extraction