DP6

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

DP6

Should the NSPE Board of Ethical Review treat criminal conviction as the exclusive predicate for Code jurisdiction over personal misconduct involving dishonesty, or should it recognize that equivalent evidence of dishonest character — such as civil fraud judgments or documented patterns of deception — may independently trigger Code obligations even absent criminal conviction?

Whether the NSPE Board of Ethical Review should resolve the tension between the Legal Authority Adjudication as Predicate principle — which grounds professional discipline in prior criminal conviction — and the Whole-Person Character Integrity Standard — which evaluates intrinsic character regardless of prosecutorial outcomes — by treating conviction as a sufficient but not exclusive predicate for Code jurisdiction over personal misconduct.

Affirm that criminal conviction is a sufficient predicate for Code jurisdiction over personal misconduct involving dishonesty, while clarifying that equivalent official determinations — civil fraud judgments, regulatory findings, or documented patterns of deception in professional dealings — may also serve as alternative predicates, ensuring that equally dishonest engineers are not arbitrarily exempted based on prosecutorial discretion.

Limit Code jurisdiction over personal misconduct to cases where a competent criminal court has entered a conviction, treating this as the exclusive predicate that protects engineers from professional discipline based on contested allegations and preserves the institutional division between criminal adjudication and professional oversight.

Adopt the whole-person character integrity standard as the primary jurisdictional basis, permitting the Board to assert Code jurisdiction over personal dishonesty whenever clear and convincing evidence of a settled dishonest disposition exists — regardless of whether criminal prosecution has occurred — on the ground that moral culpability does not depend on prosecutorial outcomes.

NSPE Board of Ethical Review