DP3

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

DP3

Does the absence of a formal confidentiality agreement eliminate ABC Engineering's ethical duty to treat privileged design knowledge gained during the peer review as non-exploitable in a subsequent competitive procurement, or does that duty persist independently of any contractual instrument — and what affirmative steps must ABC Engineering take to honor that duty even if agency approval is granted?

Whether the absence of a formal confidentiality agreement eliminates ABC Engineering's ethical obligation to refrain from exploiting insider knowledge gained during the peer review, and how that obligation interacts with the structural integrity of public peer review programs

Treat the ethical non-exploitation obligation as fully operative regardless of the absence of a confidentiality agreement — affirmatively segregating peer review knowledge from proposal development through documented internal information barriers, recusing Engineer A from proposal sections that draw on peer review findings, and disclosing to the state agency the specific nature of the informational asymmetry so the agency can assess whether additional remediation is required before approving participation

Treat the non-exploitation obligation as a best-practice standard rather than a binding ethical duty in the absence of a confidentiality agreement — applying ordinary firm-wide conflict-of-interest screening protocols to the design-build proposal without imposing additional peer-review-specific restrictions, on the grounds that the absence of a formal agreement means the information is not legally privileged and that standard professional judgment is sufficient to manage any residual ethical concern

Decline to participate in the design-build joint venture on the grounds that, without a confidentiality agreement to define and limit the scope of privileged information, the boundary between permissible general project familiarity and impermissible exploitation of insider knowledge is too uncertain to manage reliably — and that the integrity of the peer review program and the firm's professional reputation are better protected by categorical abstention than by attempting to self-police an undefined non-exploitation obligation

Engineer A / ABC Engineering