DP5

DecisionPoint
http://proethica.org/ontology/cases#DecisionPoint

DP5

Should the Board treat Engineer A's misleading resume as a single misrepresentation violation against Employer Y, or as two analytically distinct violations — one against Employer Y under Section II.5.a and one against the five co-designers under Section III.10.a?

The Board must determine whether the dual harm caused by Engineer A's misleading resume — the prospective transactional harm to Employer Y through inflated assessment of individual design capability, and the retrospective reputational harm to the five co-designers whose contributions were erased — should be treated as a single misrepresentation violation or as two analytically distinct and independently cognizable ethical wrongs, each grounded in separate NSPE Code provisions.

Treat Engineer A's misleading resume as constituting two analytically distinct violations — a misrepresentation against Employer Y under Section II.5.a and an independent failure to give credit where credit is due to the five co-designers under Section III.10.a — each grounded in separate Code provisions protecting different interests.

Analyze the misleading resume as a single misrepresentation violation focused on the employer-protection rationale under Section II.5.a, treating the harm to the five co-designers as a secondary consequence of the primary violation rather than an independently cognizable ethical wrong.

Frame the primary ethical violation as the failure to give credit where credit is due under Section III.10.a — treating the harm to the five co-designers as the central wrong — and analyze the employer deception as a secondary consequence, reversing the Board's typical employer-protection framing.

NSPE Board of Ethical Review Dual-Harm Analyst