DP2

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

DP2

Before finding that Engineer A committed an ethical violation for failing to apply newly published severe weather design parameters, must the ethics board establish both (a) a demonstrable causal nexus between that failure and the structural failure, and (b) that Engineer A's conduct rose to the level of intentional, reckless, or malicious disregard — or is the causal link alone, combined with a showing that the parameters were accessible, sufficient to support an ethical violation finding?

The ethics board's obligation to establish both a causal nexus between Engineer A's knowledge gap and the structural failure, and a threshold of moral culpability (intentional, reckless, or malicious conduct), before finding that Engineer A's failure to follow recently published severe weather design parameters constituted an ethical violation.

Find no ethical violation, requiring both a demonstrated causal nexus and evidence of intentional, reckless, or malicious conduct before imposing ethical sanction, and treating Engineer A's inadvertent knowledge gap as insufficient to meet the moral culpability threshold despite the established causal link

Find an ethical violation based on the established causal nexus and the accessibility of the published parameters, treating the demonstrated link between the knowledge gap and the structural failure as sufficient for culpability without requiring a separate showing of intentional or reckless conduct

Find no ethical violation for the pre-failure design conduct but issue a formal finding that Engineer A's design fell below the optimal standard of care, and impose a prospective remedial obligation — including targeted continuing education in severe weather design and disclosure of lessons learned to the profession — without characterizing the pre-failure conduct as an ethical breach

Ethics Board Evaluating Engineer A's Design Failure