DP3

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

DP3

Should Engineer A treat the conflict of interest as arising at the moment of solicitation activity — requiring immediate declination — or as arising only upon execution of a consulting contract or a specific act of biased governmental review, permitting Engineer A to explore the opportunity while monitoring for concrete conflicts?

A threshold question precedes the full conflict analysis: does the structural conflict of interest arise at the moment Engineer A begins soliciting municipal clients on behalf of the former firm, or only upon actual execution of a consulting contract or performance of a specific act of biased review? This question determines when Engineer A's ethical obligations are triggered and whether the mere act of entertaining or pursuing the solicitation — without yet performing any airport design work or reviewing any traffic signal plan for a solicited municipality — already constitutes an ethical violation of the faithful agent and appearance-of-impropriety standards.

Treat the conflict of interest as arising at the moment the former firm's solicitation is received — because the structural overlap between DOT grant municipalities and the municipalities to be solicited is immediately ascertainable — and decline the engagement without proceeding to contract negotiation, on the ground that the faithful agent obligation prohibits position-taking that places private interests in tension with public duties regardless of whether any specific harm has yet occurred.

Proceed with exploring the part-time opportunity while implementing a real-time monitoring protocol that triggers recusal from any DOT review or grant activity the moment a specific municipality becomes a target of the former firm's solicitation, treating the conflict as transactional and manageable rather than structural and categorical.

Pause before accepting or declining the solicitation, proactively disclose the former firm's approach to the State DOT ethics officer and the NSPE Board of Ethical Review, and request a formal advisory opinion on whether the structural overlap is sufficient to prohibit the engagement — treating the timing question as genuinely uncertain and requiring authoritative resolution before any solicitation activity begins.

Engineer A