A formal ethical precedent now exists permitting limited resume emphasis; the normative standard for professional self-representation is partially defined but leaves ambiguity about the boundary between acceptable emphasis and prohibited misrepresentation.
Case 72-11 was decided, establishing an early NSPE precedent that permitted some degree of emphasis or favorable framing on engineering resumes, creating a baseline tolerance for self-promotion in professional credentials. This exogenous event shaped the normative landscape within which later cases, including Engineer A's, would be evaluated.
The permissible range of resume representation is formally narrowed; misleading and deceptive statements are now explicitly prohibited under NSPE ethics, creating a clearer bright-line rule that precedes and informs the Code revision culminating in Section II.5.a.
Case 79-5 was decided, tightening the NSPE ethical standard for resume representation by explicitly prohibiting misleading or deceptive statements, narrowing the tolerance established by Case 72-11. This exogenous event marked a normative shift that directly constrained the kind of conduct Engineer A would later engage in.
1979 Stricter Standard Established → NSPE Code Section II.5.a Enacted
Case 79-5 tightened the NSPE ethical standard for resume representation by explicitly prohibiting misleading implications, directly informing and precipitating the subsequent codification of this stricter standard in Section II.5.a of the NSPE Code of Ethics
Without Case 79-5 establishing the stricter precedent, Section II.5.a may not have been enacted in its current form, or may have retained the more permissive 1972 standard, potentially altering the ethical finding against Engineer A
Institutional will within NSPE to revise and codify stricter standards
Prior existence of the more permissive 1972 precedent (Case 72-11) creating a gap in ethical guidance
Recognition by the NSPE Board that emphasis on individual contributions could cross into misrepresentation
The 1979 case presenting facts that exposed the inadequacy of the earlier standard
NSPE Board of Ethical Review (institutional)
The 1979 ruling combined with NSPE's subsequent code revision process was sufficient to produce the formal codification of the prohibition in Section II.5.a
BER Board Section II.5.a. Implication-Scope Purposive Interpretation
Section II.5.a. Implication-Scope Purposive Interpretation Capability
The Board demonstrated advanced capability to purposively interpret Section II.5.a.'s misrepresentation prohibition to encompass implication-based deception — statements not literally false but intentionally designed to create false impressions — grounded in the provision's employer-protection purpose.
Interpretation of Section II.5.a. in the context of Engineer A's resume implying sole authorship of jointly-designed products
Holding that 'misrepresentation' in Section II.5.a. includes implications intended to obscure truth, even where the engineer did not explicitly state sole authorship, based on the provision's purpose of protecting employers from being deceived about engineer competence
we interpret the term 'misrepresentation' in Section II.5.a. to include implications which are intended to obscure truth to a client, members of the public, or prospective employers for that matter
The purpose of then Section 3(c) was to protect a prospective employer from being deceived as to the competence of an engineer-applicant in order that the employer not be tricked into entrusting important engineering decisions to one not qualified to make them
BER Board Three-Precedent Resume Misrepresentation Progressive Code Tightening Synthesis
BER Three-Precedent Resume Misrepresentation Progressive Code Tightening Synthesis Capability
The Board demonstrated advanced capability to synthesize three BER precedents (Cases 72-11, 79-5, and the current case) tracing the progressive tightening of NSPE Code provisions on resume misrepresentation, correctly applying the most current and restrictive Section II.5.a. standard.
Board analysis of Engineer A's resume misrepresentation case requiring application of current Section II.5.a. rather than superseded narrower provisions
Systematic review of Case 72-11 (permissible emphasis under old Code 3(e)), Case 79-5 (diploma mill PhD under expanded language), and current case (implied sole authorship under Section II.5.a.), identifying the trajectory of increasingly restrictive code language
In Case 72-11, John Doe...was not in violation of the Code for rewriting his employment resume in this manner
In Case 79-5...we noted that the earlier Case 72-11 had been decided under old Code provision 3(e) which had since been expanded
New Section II.5.a. specifically addresses the issue of professional qualification misrepresentation
Since our decision in Case 79-5, the NSPE Code of Ethics has again been modified. The Code language appears to restrict even further the representations which engineers may make
In Case 72-11, John Doe, who had been employed as a design engineer in an aerospace company for twelve years…
In concluding that Doe was not in violation of the Code for rewriting his employment resume in this manner, we were inclined to the more charitable view that Doe's action can be condoned as something less than an 'exaggeration'
We emphasized that what we said in Case 72-11 was a matter of degree.
NSPE Board of Ethical Review for analogical reasoning about resume representation limits
Cited as precedent establishing that emphasizing minor experience in a resume is permissible as a matter of degree ('emphasis' vs. 'exaggeration'), provided the engineer can truthfully claim some competence in the area emphasized; distinguished from the current case where Engineer A implied sole authorship of team work
Case 79-5 involved an engineer who received a Bachelor of Science degree in 1940…
In concluding that the engineer was unethical in citing his Ph.D. as an academic qualification under these circumstances…
Since our decision in Case 79-5, the NSPE Code of Ethics has again been modified.
NSPE Board of Ethical Review for analogical reasoning about the outer limits of permissible qualification representation
Cited as precedent establishing that listing a degree from a diploma mill as an academic credential constitutes unethical misrepresentation under the expanded Code language; marks the doctrinal shift from 'exaggeration' to 'misleading, deceptive or false statements'
Case 72-11 precedent (1972) before Case 79-5 precedent (1979)
In Case 72-11...In contrast, Case 79-5 involved an engineer...we noted that the earlier Case 72-11 had been decided under old Code provision 3(e) which had since been expanded
Case 79-5 Diploma Mill PhD Engineer Resume Implication Deception Recognition Deficit
Resume Implication-Based Intentional Deception Self-Recognition Capability
The engineer in Case 79-5 failed to recognize that listing a diploma-mill PhD among academic qualifications without indicating its nature constituted an implication-based misrepresentation under the expanded code language prohibiting misleading, deceptive or false statements about professional qualifications.
Registered professional engineer who received a PhD from an organization regarded by state authorities as a diploma mill and listed it without qualification among academic credentials
Listing a PhD from a diploma mill (correspondence-only, no attendance or study required) among academic qualifications in brochures and correspondence without indicating its nature, creating a misleading impression of earned doctoral credentials
In 1960 he received a Ph.D. degree from an organization which awarded degrees on the basis of correspondence without requiring any form of personal attendance or study at the institution and was regarded by state authorities as a 'diploma mill'
The engineer listed his Ph.D. degree among his academic qualifications in brochures, correspondence, and otherwise without indicating its nature
we held that the newer and broader Code language should be interpreted to prohibit the engineer from citing his Ph.D. degree as an academic credential
Case 79-5 Diploma Mill PhD Engineer Resume Misrepresentation Recognition
Diploma Mill Self-Certification Analogy Recognition Capability
The registered PE in Case 79-5 was required to recognize that listing a PhD from a diploma mill on a resume constituted an impermissible misrepresentation of academic qualifications, as the credential was obtained without genuine study and falsely implied substantive doctoral-level education
Registered PE listed a PhD from a correspondence-only diploma mill requiring no attendance or study among academic credentials on resume
BER Case 79-5 found that listing a diploma mill PhD among academic credentials on a resume constituted misrepresentation of qualifications
Engineer A submits his resume to Employer Y and on it implies that he personally was responsible for the design of products which were actually designed through a joint effort of the members of the team
Case 79-5 Engineer Diploma Mill PhD Credential Nature Non-Disclosure
Engineer with legitimate BS and professional degree also held a PhD from a diploma mill (correspondence-only, no attendance required, regarded by state authorities as a diploma mill); listed the PhD among academic qualifications without indicating its nature; BER found this unethical under the broader post-amendment code language
Non-Accredited Credential Nature Disclosure Constraint
The engineer was constrained to disclose the non-accredited, correspondence-only nature of his PhD degree when listing it among academic qualifications in brochures, correspondence, and professional self-presentations; his failure to indicate its nature while listing it as an academic credential constituted a misleading, deceptive, or false statement regarding professional qualifications under the then-current code provision.
NSPE Code Section 3(e) (as amended); BER Case No. 79-5
In 1960 he received a Ph.D. degree from an organization which awarded degrees on the basis of correspondence without requiring any form of personal attendance or study at the institution and was regarded by state authorities as a 'diploma mill.' The engineer listed his Ph.D. degree among his academic qualifications in brochures, correspondence, and otherwise without indicating its nature.
Throughout the period during which the engineer listed the diploma-mill PhD in professional materials
In concluding that the engineer was unethical in citing his Ph.D. as an academic qualification under these circumstances, we noted that the earlier Case 72-11 had been decided under old Code provision 3(e) which had since been expanded to embrace 'misleading, deceptive or false statements regarding professional qualifications' rather than merely 'exaggerated statements of qualifications.'
Case 79-5 precedent (1979) before NSPE Code revision introducing Section II.5.a
Since our decision in Case 79-5, the NSPE Code of Ethics has again been modified. The Code language appears to restrict even further...New Section II.5.a. specifically addresses the issue
NSPE Code revision introducing Section II.5.a
CausalLink_Collaborative Product Design P
CausalLink_Decision to Seek New Employmen
CausalLink_Implying Sole Resume Authorshi
CausalLink_Omitting Team Credit Attributi
A documented, patent-backed record of collaborative design work now exists; any future representation of this work by any team member is constrained by the factual record of shared authorship.
During Engineer A's tenure at Employer X (prior to job search)
A series of patented products was collectively designed and produced by a six-member team of equal-rank staff engineers at Employer X, resulting in a shared intellectual property record. This outcome established the factual basis for attributing design credit jointly to all team members.
Collaborative Product Design Participation
Credit for designs would be shared among six engineers, potentially limiting individual resume impact later
Competent performance of engineering duties
Contribute to successful product design and fulfill professional role at Employer X
During employment at Employer X, prior to job search
Engineer A actively participated as one of six equal-rank staff engineers in designing a series of patented products for Employer X. This was a professional commitment to team-based engineering work with shared credit and responsibility.
Collaborative Product Design Participation → Collaborative Patent Portfolio Created
Engineer A actively participated as one of six equal-rank staff engineers in designing a series of patented products, contributing to the collective creation of the patent portfolio
Without Engineer A's participation, the portfolio may still have been created by remaining team members, but Engineer A's specific contributions would be absent; without the full team, the portfolio as created would not exist in its current form
Collective design effort across all six members
Employer X's organizational structure enabling team-based design
Participation of Engineer A as one team member
Participation of five other equal-rank engineers
Engineer A and five co-equal team members (shared collective)
Six-member equal-rank team working collaboratively on product designs
Successful completion of designs meeting patentability requirements
It was unethical for Engineer A to imply on his resume that he was personally responsible for the design of the products which were actually designed through the joint efforts of the members of the design team.
Beyond the Board's finding that Engineer A's implied sole authorship was unethical, the analysis reveals a dual harm that the Board did not fully articulate: the misrepresentation simultaneously deceived Employer Y about the scope of Engineer A's individual capabilities and erased the professional contributions of five co-equal engineers who held identical formal rank and shared patent credit. These two harms are analytically distinct. The harm to Employer Y is prospective and transactional — it distorts a hiring decision by inflating one candidate's apparent individual design capacity. The harm to the five co-designers is retrospective and reputational — their contributions to a documented patent portfolio are rendered invisible in the professional marketplace without their knowledge or consent. The Board's conclusion addresses only the former harm implicitly, through the lens of employer protection, but the NSPE Code's intellectual integrity obligations — particularly the duty to give credit where credit is due — independently condemn the latter harm regardless of whether any employer is deceived. A complete ethical analysis requires treating both injuries as independent violations, not merely as two facets of a single misrepresentation.
The Board's conclusion that implying sole authorship is unethical does not resolve the affirmative disclosure question: what exactly must Engineer A include on a compliant resume? The ethical floor established by the Board's finding — do not imply sole authorship — does not automatically define the ethical ceiling of required disclosure. A minimally compliant resume might simply avoid the misleading implication by using language such as 'participated in the design of a series of patented products as a member of a six-engineer team.' This formulation satisfies the prohibition on misrepresentation without requiring Engineer A to quantify each member's relative contribution, which may be genuinely indeterminate given equal formal rank and shared patent credit. However, if Engineer A made a disproportionately large substantive contribution to specific patents — even without a formally recognized lead role — a more complete disclosure would be ethically preferable, though the Board's framework does not compel it. The ethical obligation is therefore best understood as a sliding scale: the greater the gap between the implied individual contribution and the actual individual contribution, the more affirmative disclosure is required to close that gap. At minimum, team composition must be acknowledged; at maximum, relative contribution should be characterized where it is meaningfully distinguishable.
The Board's analysis implicitly treats the ethical violation as complete upon submission of the misleading resume, but a fuller analysis must address whether subsequent oral clarification during the interview process — or Employer Y's independent verification through reference checks — can retroactively cure the initial written misrepresentation. The answer, properly reasoned, is that neither subsequent clarification nor third-party verification eliminates the ethical violation, though each may mitigate its practical consequences. The ethical breach is located in the act of submitting a document designed to create a false impression in the mind of the reader at the moment of reading. That act is complete and irremediable as a matter of professional ethics regardless of what follows, because the NSPE Code's prohibition on misleading implications is not conditioned on whether the implication is ultimately believed or acted upon. Employer Y's independent verification capability does not transfer Engineer A's ethical responsibility to Employer Y; the Code places the burden of accurate self-representation squarely on the engineer, not on the employer's screening diligence. Similarly, a verbal correction during an interview, while ethically commendable as a partial remedy, does not undo the initial submission of a misleading document — it merely limits the duration of the deception. The ethical violation therefore stands independently of downstream events, and the Board's framework, properly extended, supports this conclusion.
The Board's reliance on the progressive tightening of the NSPE Code — from prohibiting false statements to prohibiting misleading implications — reflects a Kantian expansion of the duty of honesty that deserves explicit articulation. Under the earlier code standard, a technically accurate statement that created a false impression might have survived ethical scrutiny if no literal falsehood was uttered. The progressive amendment to Section II.5.a. closes this gap by recognizing that the reasonable inferences a recipient draws from a representation are morally attributable to the person who crafted the representation, particularly when that person is a sophisticated professional who understands how resumes function as screening instruments. Engineer A, as a licensed engineer, cannot plausibly claim ignorance of the inference that a hiring authority will draw from an unqualified listing of patented products on a personal resume. The intent to create that inference — even if Engineer A stopped short of explicitly claiming sole authorship — is itself the ethical violation. This means the Board's conclusion is not merely about what Engineer A said, but about what Engineer A strategically chose not to say, knowing that the omission would do the misleading work that an explicit false claim would have done more transparently. The Code's progressive standard thus functions as a prohibition on artful misrepresentation, not merely on clumsy falsehood.
The Board's conclusion does not address the threshold question of whether a disproportionately large individual contribution within a formally equal team could ever justify resume language that foregrounds personal responsibility without explicit team attribution. This question is not merely hypothetical — it has practical significance for how engineers in collaborative environments represent their work. The ethical framework established by the Board and the precedent cases suggests that formal equality of rank and shared patent credit creates a strong presumption against implying sole or primary authorship, but this presumption is not necessarily irrebuttable. If Engineer A could demonstrate — through documented evidence such as design notebooks, internal communications, or supervisor assessments — that their individual contribution was substantially greater than that of the other five engineers, a resume formulation emphasizing personal leadership of the design effort might be defensible, provided it still acknowledged the collaborative context. However, in the absence of any formally recognized differentiation — such as a lead engineer designation, a disproportionate share of patent claims, or documented supervisory responsibility — the equal-rank, equal-credit structure of the team forecloses any implication of individual primacy. The ethical line is therefore not drawn at the boundary between sole authorship and team participation, but at the boundary between documented individual distinction and undifferentiated collective contribution.
Even if Engineer A made a uniquely large or disproportionate contribution to the joint design work, the ethical violation identified by the Board would not be extinguished. The case facts establish that all six engineers held equal formal rank and shared equal patent credit. In the absence of any formally recognized differentiation in role or contribution — such as a lead designer designation, a coordinating title, or a documented record of disproportionate inventive contribution — Engineer A had no legitimate basis to imply sole authorship. A subjective belief that one contributed more than peers does not, by itself, authorize a resume representation that erases the credited contributions of five co-equal engineers. The ethical standard is not calibrated to the engineer's private self-assessment of relative contribution but to the objective record of credited authorship. Until and unless a formal mechanism exists to document and recognize differential contribution within a jointly credited team, the ethical obligation remains to represent the work as collaborative. Disproportionate contribution might, however, be a mitigating factor in assessing the severity of the violation if it were objectively verifiable, but it would not convert an implied sole-authorship claim into a permissible representation.
Engineer A bears an affirmative obligation that goes beyond merely refraining from implying sole authorship. Under the progressive tightening of the NSPE Code — particularly as reflected in Section II.5.a and the Board's synthesis of Cases 72-11, 79-5, and 86-6 — the prohibition extends to misleading implications and material omissions, not just affirmative false statements. This means Engineer A was obligated to proactively disclose, in some reasonably clear form on the resume, that the patented products were the result of a joint team effort. The minimum ethically compliant disclosure would be language that signals collaborative authorship — for example, identifying the work as team-designed or noting participation as one of six co-equal engineers. The obligation is not merely to avoid saying 'I alone designed these products' but to ensure that the overall impression conveyed by the resume accurately reflects the collaborative reality. Silence about team composition, when the natural inference drawn by a prospective employer would be individual authorship, constitutes a prohibited material omission. The affirmative disclosure obligation is therefore structural: it must be embedded in the resume itself, not deferred to a verbal clarification during an interview.
Employer Y bears an independent practical interest in verifying resume claims, and the Board's analysis implicitly acknowledges this by framing the honesty obligation in part as a protection of the prospective employer's right to accurate information. However, Employer Y's capacity or failure to independently verify the collaborative nature of the design work does not mitigate or shift Engineer A's ethical culpability. The ethical violation is complete at the moment Engineer A submits a misleading resume, regardless of whether Employer Y is deceived in fact. This is consistent with the principle that misrepresentation is an act-based violation, not a harm-based one — the wrong lies in the deliberate or reckless creation of a false impression, not solely in the downstream consequences of that impression. Employer Y's verification capability is a practical safeguard, not an ethical substitute for Engineer A's honesty obligation. To hold otherwise would effectively transfer the burden of truthfulness from the representing engineer to the receiving employer, which is incompatible with the professional integrity standards the NSPE Code imposes on licensed engineers.
The Board's ethical finding does not preclude, and in fact logically supports, the possibility of professional consequences beyond the ethical determination itself. Depending on the jurisdiction, resume misrepresentation of this character — particularly where it involves patented work with documented co-inventors — could constitute grounds for disciplinary action by a state engineering licensure board, potentially including license suspension or revocation. Civil liability to the five co-designers whose contributions were effectively erased is a more complex question, but is not foreclosed: if Engineer A's misrepresentation resulted in professional opportunities, compensation, or reputational advancement that would not have been obtained had the collaborative nature of the work been disclosed, the co-designers may have cognizable claims grounded in unjust enrichment or misappropriation of professional credit. The Board's analysis, while ethically complete on its own terms, does not address these downstream harms to the five co-designers, which represent a significant gap. The erasure of five engineers' contributions from a series of patented products is not merely an abstract ethical wrong — it has concrete professional consequences for those individuals in their own career trajectories, and a comprehensive analysis of the case's ethical stakes should acknowledge this dimension explicitly.
The principle of contextual resume emphasis established in Case 72-11 does not conflict irreconcilably with the prohibition on technically true but misleading statements — rather, the two principles operate on different sides of a threshold that the Board's progressive code analysis helps define. Case 72-11 permits an engineer to restructure a resume to foreground certain experiences over others, provided the overall impression conveyed remains accurate and does not cross into competence deception. The critical distinction is between emphasis — which selects and highlights true facts — and implication — which causes a reasonable reader to draw a false inference. Engineer A's conduct falls on the wrong side of this line because the natural and foreseeable inference drawn by Employer Y from the resume as structured was that Engineer A was individually responsible for the patented designs. The absence of any team attribution language, combined with the prominence given to the patents, transforms permissible emphasis into prohibited implication. Case 72-11 does not authorize omissions that are material to the accurate understanding of the nature of the credited work; it authorizes only the selective ordering and weighting of truthful, non-misleading information.
The tension between intent-based severity calibration and the omission-as-misrepresentation principle is real but resolvable within the Board's framework. The Board acknowledges that the ethical severity of a misrepresentation may be calibrated based on whether it was intentional or inadvertent — a distinction that affects the degree of culpability assigned. However, this calibration operates at the level of sanction severity, not at the level of whether a violation occurred at all. Under the progressive code standard reflected in Section II.5.a, a material omission constitutes a prohibited misrepresentation regardless of intent, because the standard focuses on the impression created in the mind of the recipient, not on the subjective state of the representing engineer. Intent therefore determines how seriously the violation is treated — an intentional misleading implication is more culpable than an inadvertent one — but it does not determine whether the omission crosses the ethical threshold. In Engineer A's case, the Board's analysis suggests the implication was deliberate rather than inadvertent, which places the conduct at the more serious end of the culpability spectrum and forecloses any mitigation based on inadvertence.
The interest of Employer Y in receiving accurate resume information and the interest of the five co-designers in receiving accurate professional credit are not in conflict — they are complementary and mutually reinforcing. Both interests are violated by the same act: Engineer A's misleading resume representation. The Board's analysis frames the honesty obligation primarily through the lens of employer protection, which is the most direct and legally cognizable harm. However, the intellectual integrity interest of the five co-designers is an independent ethical concern grounded in Section III.10.a's obligation to give credit where credit is due. Neither interest should subordinate the other in the ethical analysis; rather, the co-designers' interest provides an additional and independent basis for finding the conduct unethical, beyond the employer-protection rationale. A complete ethical analysis would recognize that Engineer A's resume misrepresentation simultaneously wrongs two distinct classes of affected parties — the prospective employer who is deceived about the nature of the qualifications being represented, and the five co-engineers whose professional contributions are effectively appropriated without acknowledgment.
From a deontological perspective, Engineer A failed to fulfill the categorical duty of honesty. The Kantian framework requires that one act only on maxims that could be universalized without contradiction. If every engineer in a collaborative team implied sole authorship of jointly designed work on their resume, the institution of resume-based professional credentialing would collapse — prospective employers could place no reliance on resume representations, and the entire system of professional qualification disclosure would be undermined. The maxim underlying Engineer A's conduct — 'imply sole authorship of jointly credited work when doing so advances my career interests' — cannot be universalized without self-defeating consequences. Furthermore, Engineer A's conduct treats both Employer Y and the five co-designers as mere means to an end: Employer Y is manipulated into a hiring decision based on false impressions, and the co-designers' contributions are instrumentalized as a credential-building resource without their knowledge or consent. The deontological verdict is therefore unambiguous: Engineer A violated the categorical duty of honesty regardless of the competitive pressures of the employment market.
From a consequentialist standpoint, the aggregate harms produced by Engineer A's misleading resume representation substantially outweigh any personal career benefit obtained. The harms operate across three distinct dimensions. First, Employer Y faces a misallocation of its hiring decision — it may select Engineer A based on an inflated assessment of individual design capability that does not reflect the collaborative reality of the work. Second, the five co-designers suffer a concrete professional harm: their contributions to a series of patented products are erased from the professional record that Employer Y receives, potentially affecting those engineers' own career prospects if Employer Y or others in the industry form impressions about the design team's composition. Third, the systemic harm to the engineering profession is significant — if resume misrepresentation of this kind becomes normalized, the reliability of professional credentials erodes, increasing verification costs for all employers and disadvantaging honest engineers who accurately represent collaborative work. Against these harms, the personal career benefit to Engineer A — a potentially more favorable hiring outcome — is both modest in magnitude and illegitimately obtained. The consequentialist calculus therefore strongly supports the Board's ethical finding.
From a virtue ethics perspective, Engineer A's decision to structure the resume in a way that obscured the collaborative nature of the design work reveals a deficit in two core professional virtues: intellectual honesty and integrity. A person of genuine professional integrity would recognize that the patents represent a shared achievement and would feel an internal obligation — independent of any external rule — to represent that achievement accurately. The fact that Engineer A instead chose a presentation calculated to maximize personal credit at the expense of accurate attribution suggests that competitive self-interest was allowed to override the internalized commitment to truthfulness that characterizes a virtuous professional. This is not merely a technical rule violation; it reflects a character disposition that, if habitual, would systematically undermine the trustworthiness on which professional engineering relationships depend. Virtue ethics also highlights the relational dimension of the wrong: a virtuous engineer would recognize obligations not only to prospective employers but to colleagues whose contributions deserve acknowledgment. Engineer A's conduct fails on both counts, suggesting that the ethical deficit is not situational but dispositional.
The NSPE Code's progressive tightening of resume representation standards — from prohibiting false statements to prohibiting misleading implications — does reflect a Kantian recognition that the duty of honesty extends to the reasonable inferences a recipient will draw, not merely to the literal truth of individual statements. A statement can be literally true in each of its component parts while simultaneously creating a false overall impression; the Code's evolution acknowledges that this form of deception is ethically equivalent to an outright false statement because it produces the same epistemic harm in the recipient. Engineer A's conduct exemplifies precisely this category of violation: no individual claim on the resume may have been literally false, but the overall impression conveyed — that Engineer A was individually responsible for the patented designs — was false in a material and foreseeable way. The expanded Kantian duty of honesty requires that the representing party take responsibility not only for what they say but for what a reasonable recipient will understand them to have said. Engineer A violated this expanded duty by structuring the resume to exploit the gap between literal truth and reasonable inference.
Had Engineer A listed the patented products with an explicit notation such as 'co-designed with a five-member engineering team,' the resume would almost certainly have been ethically compliant. Such a disclosure would have satisfied the affirmative obligation to accurately represent the collaborative nature of the work, eliminated the misleading implication of sole authorship, and still permitted Engineer A to highlight personal participation in a significant body of patented design work. This counterfactual illustrates that the ethical violation was not inherent in claiming credit for the patents — Engineer A was legitimately credited as a co-inventor — but in the manner of presentation that erased the collaborative context. The Board's finding therefore does not prohibit engineers from listing jointly credited work on their resumes; it requires only that the collaborative nature of the work be disclosed in a way that prevents a reasonable reader from drawing the false inference of sole authorship. The ethical path was available and required only a modest addition to the resume language.
The ethical violation committed by Engineer A in submitting a misleading resume is complete and irremediable as an independent act, regardless of whether Employer Y independently verified the team-based nature of the design work before making a hiring decision. The violation is constituted by the act of submission itself — the deliberate creation and transmission of a document designed to convey a false impression — not by the downstream consequence of a successful deception. Even if Employer Y conducted thorough reference checks and discovered the collaborative reality before extending an offer, Engineer A would still have submitted a misleading resume and would still have violated the ethical obligations imposed by Section II.5.a. This conclusion is consistent with the act-based rather than harm-based character of the ethical prohibition: the wrong lies in the misrepresentation, not solely in its effectiveness. Employer Y's verification capability is therefore ethically irrelevant to the question of whether a violation occurred, though it may be relevant to the practical consequences that flow from the violation.
A formally recognized lead designer role — even among engineers of equal formal rank — would shift the ethical calculus, but would not by itself render an implied sole-authorship claim permissible. If Engineer A had held a documented coordinating or lead role, it would be accurate and permissible to represent that role on the resume — for example, 'served as lead designer within a six-member engineering team.' This representation would be truthful, would convey Engineer A's elevated contribution, and would simultaneously disclose the collaborative context. What it would not authorize is the complete omission of the team context, because even a lead designer does not bear sole responsibility for work that was jointly executed and jointly credited. The threshold at which implying primary responsibility becomes permissible is therefore not a function of contribution magnitude alone, but of whether the representation accurately captures both the nature of the individual role and the collaborative structure within which it was performed. No level of individual contribution, short of actual sole authorship, would make the omission of team composition ethically permissible when the natural inference drawn by a prospective employer would be individual rather than collaborative design responsibility.
A subsequent oral clarification during a job interview would not retroactively cure the ethical violation embedded in the submission of a misleading written resume. The ethical breach is constituted by the act of submitting the misleading document, which is an independent wrong that occurs at the moment of submission. The resume functions as a formal professional representation that Employer Y relies upon as a baseline document for evaluating Engineer A's qualifications; its misleading character is not contingent on whether a subsequent conversation corrects the false impression. Moreover, an oral clarification during an interview — prompted perhaps by the interviewer's questions rather than by Engineer A's voluntary disclosure — does not demonstrate the proactive commitment to honesty that the NSPE Code requires. It may mitigate the practical harm to Employer Y by correcting the false impression before a hiring decision is made, and it may be relevant to assessing the overall severity of the ethical violation, but it does not eliminate the violation itself. The ethical obligation was to submit an accurate resume in the first instance; having failed to do so, Engineer A cannot retroactively satisfy that obligation through subsequent oral disclosure.
The principle that competitive employment pressure provides no justification for misrepresentation does not conflict with the omission materiality threshold in any way that would permit Engineer A's conduct. The suggestion that competitive market norms might influence what counts as a material omission — because all engineers in a competitive market selectively present their credentials — is ethically untenable. Market norms of selective presentation do not define the materiality threshold for ethical purposes; the NSPE Code sets that threshold independently of market practice. If competitive norms permitted the omission of team composition information, the result would be a race to the bottom in which increasingly misleading resume presentations became normalized, ultimately destroying the informational value of professional credentials for all employers. The materiality of the omission is determined by whether a reasonable prospective employer would consider the omitted information significant to the hiring decision — and the collaborative versus individual nature of credited design work is unambiguously material by that standard. Competitive pressure is therefore not a factor that adjusts the materiality threshold; it is simply an impermissible justification for crossing it.
The tension between contextual resume emphasis permissibility — as established in Case 72-11 — and the prohibition on technically true but misleading statements was resolved by treating selective emphasis as ethically permissible only when it foregrounds a genuine individual contribution without simultaneously erasing the collaborative context that defines the scope of that contribution. In Case 72-11, John Doe restructured his resume to highlight managerial experience he actually held, even if it was a minor portion of his work; the emphasis distorted proportion but did not falsify the nature of his role. Engineer A's conduct crossed a categorically different line: by implying sole authorship of jointly patented products, he did not merely emphasize his participation — he transformed a shared credit into an exclusive one. The case teaches that the permissible boundary of resume emphasis ends precisely where the reasonable inference drawn by a recipient diverges from the factual record of who did what. Emphasis that changes the qualitative character of a contribution — from collaborative to individual — is not selective framing; it is misrepresentation by implication.
The interaction between the intentional versus inadvertent misrepresentation principle and the omission materiality threshold principle reveals an important asymmetry in how the NSPE Code allocates ethical culpability. The Board's analysis acknowledges that calibrating severity based on intent is appropriate — an inadvertent inaccuracy warrants correction while an intentional deception warrants condemnation — but the progressive tightening of the Code under Section II.5.a. establishes that a material omission constitutes a prohibited misrepresentation regardless of whether the engineer subjectively intended to deceive. These two principles are not in conflict so much as they operate on different axes: intent governs the degree of moral culpability and the severity of appropriate professional consequences, while omission materiality governs whether a violation occurred at all. In Engineer A's case, the omission of team composition from a resume listing jointly patented products is objectively material because it directly affects Employer Y's assessment of Engineer A's independent design capability — the very qualification at issue in the hiring decision. The case teaches that engineers cannot escape an ethical finding by claiming inadvertence when the omitted fact is one that any reasonable engineer in their position would recognize as material to the recipient's evaluation.
The principle protecting employers from deceptive resume representations and the principle of intellectual integrity in authorship — which protects the five co-designers' right to credit — are not genuinely in conflict in this case; rather, they are mutually reinforcing and converge on the same ethical conclusion from different directions. The employer-protection principle focuses on Employer Y's right to make an informed hiring decision based on accurate representations of individual capability. The authorship integrity principle focuses on the five co-equal staff engineers whose contributions were effectively erased from the professional record. Both principles are violated by the same act: Engineer A's implied sole authorship. The case teaches that resume misrepresentation in collaborative engineering work is not a victimless distortion of emphasis — it simultaneously deceives the prospective employer about the candidate's independent capabilities and inflicts a dignitary and professional harm on co-contributors whose equal credit is appropriated without acknowledgment. When both the employer-protection and authorship-integrity principles point toward the same prohibition, the ethical case against the conduct is doubly grounded, and neither interest need be subordinated to the other to reach the correct conclusion.
Should Engineer A list the jointly patented products on his resume in a manner that implies personal design responsibility, or must he affirmatively disclose the team-based nature of the work?
Engineer A must decide how to represent his participation in a series of jointly patented products on his resume submitted to Employer Y, where all six team members held equal rank and shared patent credit. The core tension is between presenting credentials in the most favorable light versus accurately disclosing the collaborative nature of the design work.
List the patented products with explicit notation of collaborative authorship — e.g., 'co-designed with a five-member engineering team' — so that Employer Y can accurately assess Engineer A's individual contribution without drawing the false inference of sole design responsibility.
List the patented products on the resume under Engineer A's individual credentials without team attribution language, relying on the standard resume convention that patent listings reflect participation rather than sole authorship, and leaving clarification to the interview process.
Note that the patented products resulted from a team effort without naming individual co-designers, consistent with the minimum disclosure standard — acknowledging collaborative context while preserving Engineer A's ability to highlight personal participation in a significant patent portfolio.
Engineer A Resume-Submitting Job-Seeking Engineer
Should Engineer A treat competitive employment pressure as a justification for omitting team context from his resume, or must he refrain from misrepresentation regardless of competitive market conditions?
Engineer A must determine whether the intense competitive pressure of the engineering employment market justifies structuring his resume to foreground personal credit for jointly patented products without disclosing the team context, or whether competitive pressure is ethically irrelevant to the misrepresentation analysis. This decision point also addresses whether selective emphasis of genuine participation crosses into prohibited implication of sole authorship.
Refrain from using competitive employment pressure as justification for omitting team context, and structure the resume to accurately reflect the collaborative nature of the patented design work even if doing so is less advantageous in a competitive market.
Structure the resume according to prevailing competitive market conventions for patent listings, treating individual patent attribution as an understood industry shorthand for participation rather than sole authorship, and relying on employer verification to correct any misimpression.
Foreground Engineer A's genuine individual contribution to the patented design work — such as specific technical responsibilities within the team — while still disclosing the collaborative context, thereby competing effectively without crossing into misrepresentation.
Engineer A Competitive-Pressure-Invoking Job-Seeking Engineer
Does Engineer A's selective foregrounding of patent participation without team attribution constitute permissible resume emphasis under Case 72-11, or does it constitute prohibited misrepresentation by implication under Section II.5.a?
The Board must determine whether Engineer A's selective emphasis of his participation in jointly patented products — without explicitly claiming sole authorship but without disclosing team composition — falls within the permissible zone of contextual resume emphasis established in Case 72-11, or whether it crosses into prohibited misrepresentation by implication under the progressive NSPE Code standard. This decision point addresses the boundary between permissible selective framing and prohibited misleading implication.
Treat the selective foregrounding of patent participation as permissible contextual resume emphasis under Case 72-11, reasoning that Engineer A genuinely participated in the patented design work and is merely highlighting that genuine experience without making an explicit false claim of sole authorship.
Determine that Engineer A's selective framing crosses from permissible emphasis into prohibited misrepresentation by implication, because the natural and foreseeable inference drawn by Employer Y — that Engineer A was individually responsible for the patented designs — diverges materially from the factual record of shared team credit.
Apply the competence-deception boundary test from Case 72-11 to determine whether the emphasis deceived Employer Y about Engineer A's actual competence for the role sought — finding a violation only if the implied individual design capability materially exceeds Engineer A's actual individual capability, and not merely because team context was omitted.
Engineer A Selective-Emphasis Resume-Framing Engineer
Does Employer Y's capacity to independently verify resume claims mitigate Engineer A's ethical culpability for submitting a misleading resume, or is the ethical violation complete and irremediable upon submission regardless of downstream verification?
The Board must determine whether Employer Y's independent capacity to verify the team-based nature of Engineer A's design work through reference checks or other means mitigates or shifts any portion of Engineer A's ethical culpability for submitting a misleading resume, and whether the ethical violation is complete upon submission regardless of downstream verification or harm.
Determine that Engineer A's ethical violation is fully constituted at the moment of submitting the misleading resume, regardless of whether Employer Y independently verified the team-based nature of the work or was actually deceived in making a hiring decision.
Recognize that Employer Y's independent verification capacity and residual obligation to seek clarification of ambiguous resume claims partially shifts the ethical burden, mitigating Engineer A's culpability when the prospective employer has reasonable means to discover the collaborative nature of the work.
Treat the ethical violation as contingent on whether Employer Y was actually deceived and made a hiring decision based on the false impression of sole authorship — finding no violation where Employer Y discovered the collaborative reality through reference checks before extending an offer.
Engineer A Act-of-Submission Ethical Violation Assessor
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
Under the progressive NSPE Code standard, does Engineer A's omission of team context constitute a prohibited misrepresentation regardless of intent, or does the intent-versus-inadvertence distinction determine whether a violation occurred at all?
The Board must determine how the progressive tightening of the NSPE Code — from prohibiting false statements under earlier standards to prohibiting misleading implications under Section II.5.a — applies to Engineer A's conduct, and whether the intent-versus-inadvertence distinction affects whether a violation occurred or only the severity of the sanction. This decision point addresses the reconciliation of the intentional deception principle with the omission materiality standard under the progressive code.
Determine that the omission of team composition constitutes a prohibited misrepresentation under the progressive code standard regardless of whether Engineer A intended to deceive, because the standard focuses on the impression created in Employer Y's mind and the omitted information is objectively material to the hiring decision.
Limit the ethical violation finding to cases of intentional deception, treating inadvertent omissions of team context as warranting correction rather than condemnation, and finding no violation where Engineer A did not subjectively intend to create a false impression of sole authorship.
Find a violation based on the objective materiality of the omission under the progressive code standard, but calibrate the severity of the ethical finding and the appropriateness of professional consequences based on whether the omission was intentional or inadvertent — treating intent as relevant to sanction but not to whether a violation occurred.
Engineer A Progressive-Code Intentional-Omission Assessor
Staff Engineer, Employer X / Job Applicant
Would need to represent collaborative work history on resume in a competitive job market
Lawful exercise of professional autonomy and career self-determination
Secure new professional employment with Employer Y to advance career
Upon leaving or while still at Employer X, prior to resume submission
Engineer A made the volitional decision to leave Employer X and pursue a position with Employer Y, initiating the job application process. This decision set in motion the subsequent resume preparation and submission.
Doe Resume Emphasis Permissible Boundary Case 72-11
Aerospace design engineer laid off after 12 years, advised to seek managerial positions, rewrote resume to emphasize minor managerial experience; BER found no violation as a matter of degree — emphasis rather than exaggeration
Resume Emphasis Permissible Boundary Non-Deception Constraint
Doe was constrained to ensure that his resume restructuring — emphasizing minor managerial experience over dominant technical design experience — did not cross from permissible emphasis into exaggeration or misrepresentation of his actual competence to perform the managerial responsibilities sought, with the constraint satisfied because Doe could truthfully show some degree of competence in the managerial and administrative areas even though he strongly emphasized its extent and level.
NSPE Code old Section 3(c); BER Case No. 72-11
In concluding that Doe was not in violation of the Code for rewriting his employment resume in this manner, we were inclined to the more charitable view that Doe's action can be condoned as something less than an 'exaggeration' in that it more nearly might be considered a degree of emphasis.
At the time of resume preparation and submission for managerial/administrative positions
In Case 72-11, we found that Doe could truthfully show some degree of competence in the managerial and administrative technical areas of the employment even though Doe strongly emphasized its extent and level.
We noted that this is an established and accepted form of sales technique in which the seller proclaims all of the virtues of his product and conveniently ignores its less desirable features.
Doe rewriting his resume before Doe obtaining new job
Doe devised a new resume which played down his technical design experience...As a result, Doe was able to obtain a new job
Doe's layoff from aerospace company before Doe's multi-month job search
Doe was laid off when contracts with his company were terminated...After many months of seeking a new job in his specialized field with no success
Doe's multi-month job search before Doe rewriting his resume
After being turned down repeatedly for technical, managerial or administrative positions...Doe devised a new resume
{'relationship_to_engineer_a': 'Former employer', 'team_size': 'Six staff engineers of equal rank'}
Employer X is the organization where Engineer A and the five-member team were employed as staff engineers and jointly designed the patented products. The misrepresentation concerns work performed under Employer X's employment.
{'type': 'employer_of', 'target': 'Engineer A Collaborative Credit Misrepresenting Job-Seeking Engineer'}
{'type': 'employer_of', 'target': 'Five-Member Joint Design Team'}
As an employee for Employer X, Engineer A was a staff engineer along with five other staff engineers of equal rank
Employer Y Prospective Employer Resume Verification Inquiry
Prospective Employer Resume Verification Inquiry Capability
Employer Y, as the prospective engineering employer evaluating Engineer A's resume, was required to recognize ambiguity in Engineer A's patent design credit claims and to pursue targeted clarifying inquiries about team composition and individual role before making hiring decisions based on those claims
Employer Y evaluated Engineer A's resume containing implied sole authorship of jointly-patented products and bore a residual verification obligation
Employer Y received a resume implying sole design credit for jointly-patented products and bore a residual obligation to seek clarification of the scope and nature of Engineer A's contribution
Employer Y Resume-Deceived Prospective Employer Qualification Verification Constraint
Employer Y received a resume from Engineer A implying sole personal responsibility for jointly-designed patented products; the ethical norm of professional due diligence constrained Employer Y to verify the scope of claimed credits before relying on them.
Employer Y, as a prospective engineering employer evaluating Engineer A's resume, was constrained by the professional norm of seeking clarification of the scope and nature of claimed design credits — particularly where resume language implies sole authorship of products that may have been collaboratively designed — before making employment decisions that rely on those representations.
NSPE Code of Ethics; professional employment due diligence norms
During the resume evaluation and hiring process
Employer Y Resume-Deceived Prospective Employer Verification Inquiry Capability Instance
Employer Y, as the prospective engineering employer evaluating Engineer A's resume, bore the capability — and residual obligation — to formulate clarifying inquiries about the scope and nature of Engineer A's claimed design contributions to verify whether the patented products were individually or jointly designed.
Employer Y received Engineer A's resume implying sole authorship of jointly-patented products and was the party the Board identified as the intended beneficiary of the Code's misrepresentation protections
Position as the party the Code is designed to protect from deception about engineer competence, with the practical ability to request clarification about team composition and individual role before making hiring decisions
Employer Y, as a prospective engineering employer evaluating Engineer A's resume, bears a residual obligation to seek clarification of the scope and nature of Engineer A's claimed design contributions
Engineer A Artful Misrepresentation in Resume Recognition
Artful Misrepresentation in Negotiation Recognition Capability
Engineer A was required to recognize that his resume framing — implying sole personal responsibility for jointly-designed products without explicitly lying — constituted an artfully constructed false impression in violation of professional ethics obligations
Engineer A's resume implied sole authorship through framing rather than explicit false statement, constituting artful misrepresentation to Employer Y
Failure to exercise this capability: Engineer A crafted resume language that was artfully misleading about his individual versus team contribution to the patented products
Engineer A BER Dual-Precedent Resume Misrepresentation Spectrum Triangulation
BER Dual-Precedent Resume Misrepresentation Spectrum Triangulation Capability
Engineer A was required to triangulate between BER Case 72-11 (permissible selective emphasis) and BER Case 86-6 (impermissible implied sole authorship of team-designed products) to correctly locate his own resume conduct on the spectrum and recognize that implying sole authorship of jointly-patented team work falls squarely within the impermissible category
The BER analysis of this case draws on both Case 72-11 and Case 86-6 to locate Engineer A's conduct on the misrepresentation spectrum
Failure to exercise this capability: Engineer A's resume conduct aligns with the impermissible end of the spectrum established by BER Case 86-6 rather than the permissible emphasis of Case 72-11
Engineer A Co-Equal Team Member Credit Acknowledgment in Resume Deficit
Co-Equal Team Member Credit Acknowledgment in Resume Capability
Engineer A failed to exercise the capability to frame his resume descriptions of jointly-patented products to indicate that the work was a team effort, instead omitting any reference to the collaborative nature of the design, thereby violating Section III.10.a.'s due-credit requirement.
Engineer A's resume listed products jointly designed by six engineers without acknowledging the team nature of the work
Listing jointly-patented products on resume without any indication that the design was performed by a six-member team, failing to express that the work was a team effort rather than an individual effort
Engineer A appears to have been in violation of Section III.10.a. by failing to provide due credit to those five other staff engineers who worked with Engineer A in designing certain products
we do believe that Engineer A has an obligation to express the fact that the design work was performed as a result of a team effort as opposed to an individual effort
we do not mean to suggest that Engineer A indicate the names of the five other engineers on his employment resume
Engineer A Competitive Employment Pressure Non-Justification Resume Misrepresentation
The case discussion explicitly acknowledges the great pressure on job applicants to stress qualities that make the best impression, but the BER nonetheless found Engineer A's intentional misleading implication unethical despite this competitive context
Negotiation Competitive Pressure Non-Justification for Misrepresentation Constraint
Engineer A was constrained from using the highly competitive employment environment and the pressure to make the best impression on prospective employers as justification for intentionally obscuring the team nature of the jointly-patented products on his resume, establishing that competitive employment pressure does not relax the duty of non-deception in professional self-presentations.
NSPE Code Section II.5.a; BER Case No. 86-6
Today there is great pressure on the job applicant to stress those qualities and qualifications which will have the greatest impact and make the best impression upon those in a position of responsibility in the hiring process.
At the time of resume preparation and submission to Employer Y
Instead, we are referring to statements such as those made by Engineer A which are intentionally designed to mislead a potential employer by obscuring the truth.
Job seekers take great pains to stress those aspects of their educational and employment history which demonstrate their suitability for the particular employment position in question.
Engineer A Employment Competitive Pressure Non-Justification Self-Application Deficit
Employment Competitive Pressure Non-Justification for Resume Deception Self-Application Capability
Engineer A failed to apply the principle that competitive employment pressure does not justify resume misrepresentation, instead allowing the competitive employment environment to motivate intentional obscuring of the team nature of his design contributions.
Engineer A operated in a highly competitive employment environment where resume screening creates pressure to maximize apparent qualifications
Submission of resume implying sole authorship in a competitive employment environment without disclosing team composition, despite the ethical obligation to maintain accuracy regardless of competitive pressure
Today there is great pressure on the job applicant to stress those qualities and qualifications which will have the greatest impact and make the best impression
In the highly competitive employment environment that currently exists, the employment resume is the means through which the prospective employer 'screens out' the less desirous, less qualified applicants
Engineer A Equal-Rank Peer Contribution Non-Erasure
Equal-Rank Peer Contribution Non-Erasure Capability
Engineer A was required to recognize that omitting the five co-equal staff engineers from his resume description of the jointly-patented products constituted an impermissible erasure of their professional credit, and to ensure their contributions were acknowledged in his qualification representations
Engineer A was one of six equal-rank staff engineers who jointly designed and were jointly credited with the patented products; his resume omitted all five peers
Failure to exercise this capability: Engineer A's resume erased the five co-equal team members entirely, implying sole personal design responsibility
Engineer A was a staff engineer along with five other staff engineers of equal rank
Engineer A along with five other engineers in his team participated in and was credited with the design of a series of patented products
This team of six was responsible for the design of certain products
Engineer A Intent-Differentiated Misrepresentation Severity Calibration Resume
The BER's analysis of Engineer A's resume conduct turned on whether the misleading implication was intentional or inadvertent, with the Board noting that intentional misleading statements constitute a clear ethical violation while inadvertent omissions may be assessed differently.
BER Precedent Intent-Differentiated Misrepresentation Severity Calibration Constraint
The severity of the ethical violation finding against Engineer A was constrained by the intent-differentiation principle — if the misleading implication on his resume was intentional (designed to deceive Employer Y about his individual design responsibility), the violation is clear and serious; if inadvertent (an oversight without malice), the ethical assessment must be calibrated accordingly, though inadvertence does not fully exculpate where the misrepresentation is material.
BER Case No. 83-1; BER Case No. 90-4; BER Case No. 86-6; NSPE Code Section II.5.a
At the time of ethical review of Engineer A's resume conduct
Engineer A Intentional Implication-Based Misrepresentation Resume Employer Y
Engineer A listed jointly-patented products on his resume without acknowledging the five co-equal team members, creating an implied impression of sole or primary authorship; BER found this violated Section II.5.a as an intentional implication designed to mislead
Team-Designed Work Implied Sole Authorship Resume Prohibition Constraint
Engineer A was constrained by NSPE Code Section II.5.a from implying on his resume submitted to Employer Y that he was personally and solely responsible for the design of products that were in fact designed through the joint efforts of a six-member team of equal-rank engineers, with the constraint applying to intentional implications designed to obscure the collaborative nature of the work even in the absence of explicit false statements.
In the context of the present case, we interpret Section II.5.a. to prohibit Engineer A to imply on his resume that he was personally responsible for the design of products which were actually designed through the joint efforts of the members of the design team.
While we acknowledge that Engineer A did not in fact state that he was personally responsible for the work in question, we interpret the term 'misrepresentation' in Section II.5.a. to include implications which are intended to obscure truth to a client, members of the public, or prospective employers for that matter.
Engineer A Intentional vs Unintentional Misrepresentation Calibration Resume
BER explicitly distinguished between unintentional inaccuracies (not per se unethical) and intentional misleading implications (clearly unethical), finding Engineer A's conduct fell in the latter category
The BER was constrained to calibrate its ethical violation finding to the intentional nature of Engineer A's resume misrepresentation — distinguishing between unintentionally false or inaccurate statements (which would not be unethical per se) and statements intentionally designed to mislead a potential employer by obscuring the truth (which constitute a clear ethical violation) — and Engineer A was correspondingly constrained to ensure that any resume implications were not intentionally structured to mislead.
We stress however, that we do not mean to suggest that unintentionally false or inaccurate statements would be unethical per se.
At the time of BER ethical analysis and at the time of Engineer A's resume preparation
Engineer A Joint Patent Co-Designer Credit Omission Resume Prohibition
Five co-equal staff engineers at Employer X participated equally in the design of the patented products; Engineer A's resume omitted any acknowledgment of their contributions, creating a false impression of sole authorship.
Joint Patent Co-Designer Credit Omission Resume Prohibition Constraint
Engineer A was prohibited from listing the jointly-patented products on his resume without affirmatively disclosing that the patents resulted from a six-member equal-rank team effort and identifying his specific individual contribution — the omission of the five co-equal team members from the resume description violated the duty to give credit to those to whom credit is due under NSPE Code Section III.10.a.
NSPE Code Section III.10.a; NSPE Code Section II.5.a; BER Case No. 86-6
Engineer A Joint Patent Team Composition Affirmative Disclosure
Joint Patent Team Composition Affirmative Disclosure Capability
Engineer A was required to affirmatively disclose that the patented products listed on his resume were designed by a six-member team of equal-ranked engineers, so that Employer Y could accurately assess his individual contribution rather than being misled into believing he was the sole designer
Engineer A listed jointly-patented products on his resume to Employer Y without disclosing the six-member equal-rank team that designed them
Failure to exercise this capability: Engineer A omitted all reference to the five co-equal team members when listing the jointly-patented products
Engineer A Pertinent Fact Dual-Element Misrepresentation Resume Qualification
The team composition (six equal-rank engineers) and Engineer A's specific individual role within that team were pertinent facts material to Employer Y's hiring decision; their omission combined with the implied sole-authorship framing satisfied both elements of the misrepresentation prohibition.
Pertinent Fact Dual-Element Misrepresentation Prohibition Constraint
Engineer A's resume conduct was constrained by the dual-element misrepresentation test: (1) the team composition and his equal-rank status among six co-designers constituted 'pertinent facts' of clear and decisive relevance to Employer Y's assessment of his qualifications, and (2) the implied sole-authorship framing was structured with the intent and purpose of enhancing his apparent qualifications — both elements being present, the conduct constituted a prohibited misrepresentation of professional qualifications.
BER Case No. 83-1; NSPE Code Section II.5.a; BER Case No. 86-6
Engineer A Prior-Employer Project Credit Scope Calibration
Prior-Employer Project Credit Scope Calibration Capability
Engineer A was required to calibrate the scope of credit he claimed for the patented products designed at Employer X to his specific personal contributions as one of six equal-rank team members, rather than implying individual ownership of the entire team design effort
Engineer A transitioning from Employer X to Employer Y listed jointly-patented products without disclosing the six-member team context
Failure to exercise this capability: Engineer A claimed credit implying sole personal responsibility rather than limiting claims to his individual role within the team
Engineer A submits his resume to Employer Y and on it implies that he personally was responsible for the design of products
Engineer A Resume Competitive Employment Context Ethical Stakes Recognition Deficit
Resume Competitive Employment Context Ethical Stakes Recognition Capability
Engineer A failed to adequately recognize the heightened ethical stakes of resume misrepresentation in the competitive employment context — specifically that the resume's screening function and its role as first impression make accuracy particularly critical for employer protection.
Engineer A prepared resume in a highly competitive employment environment where the stakes of resume content are particularly high
Allowing competitive employment pressure to motivate misleading resume framing rather than recognizing that the importance of the resume to employer decision-making heightens rather than diminishes the ethical obligation of accuracy
The importance of the employment resume cannot be overstated
The purpose of then Section 3(c) was to protect a prospective employer from being deceived as to the competence of an engineer-applicant
the contents of a resume can have an enormous impact upon the success of an employment applicant being considered for a position
Engineer A Resume Emphasis Permissible Boundary Non-Deception Application
The BER distinguished permissible emphasis (BER 72-11, Engineer Doe restructuring resume to highlight managerial experience) from impermissible misrepresentation (BER 86-6, Engineer A implying sole credit for team-designed patents); Engineer A's conduct fell on the impermissible side of this boundary.
Engineer A was constrained by the boundary between permissible resume emphasis and impermissible misrepresentation — while selective emphasis of experience is ethically permissible, the implied sole-authorship framing of jointly-patented team work crossed from permissible emphasis into deceptive misrepresentation, particularly where the intent was to mislead Employer Y about the scope of his individual design responsibility.
NSPE Code Section II.5.a; BER Case No. 72-11; BER Case No. 86-6
Engineer A Resume Implication-Based Intentional Deception Self-Recognition Deficit
Engineer A lacked or failed to exercise the capability to recognize that his resume framing — listing jointly-patented products without disclosing the six-member team — constituted an intentionally misleading implication rather than a permissible omission, resulting in a violation of Section II.5.a.
Engineer A submitted a resume to Employer Y listing products jointly designed by a six-member team without indicating the team nature of the work
Failure to disclose team composition when listing jointly-patented products on resume submitted to Employer Y, creating the misleading impression of sole or primary personal responsibility
we interpret Section II.5.a. to prohibit Engineer A to imply on his resume that he was personally responsible for the design of products which were actually designed through the joint efforts of the members of the design team
Engineer A did not in fact state that he was personally responsible for the work in question
statements such as those made by Engineer A which are intentionally designed to mislead a potential employer by obscuring the truth
Engineer A Resume Omission Materiality Self-Assessment
Resume Omission Materiality Self-Assessment Capability
Engineer A was required to assess whether his omission of the five co-equal team members from his resume description of the jointly-patented products was material to Employer Y's evaluation of his qualifications, and to recognize that such omission was highly material because it transformed a team achievement into an apparent individual accomplishment
Engineer A's omission of co-designers was material because it caused Employer Y to evaluate him as the sole designer of patented products rather than as one of six equal contributors
Failure to exercise this capability: Engineer A did not assess or disregarded the materiality of omitting five co-equal co-designers from his resume
Engineer A Resume Selective Emphasis vs Misrepresentation Boundary Discrimination
Resume Selective Emphasis vs. Misrepresentation Boundary Discrimination Capability
Engineer A was required to correctly distinguish between permissible selective emphasis of his genuine individual contributions to the team's patented products and impermissible misrepresentation that implied sole authorship of jointly-designed work
Engineer A's resume to Employer Y implied sole design credit rather than accurately representing his role as one of six equal-rank team members
Failure to exercise this capability: Engineer A crossed the boundary from permissible emphasis into impermissible misrepresentation by implying sole personal responsibility
Engineer A Team-Designed Patent Sole-Authorship Implication Resume Prohibition
Engineer A, one of six equal-rank staff engineers who jointly designed and jointly patented a series of products at Employer X, submitted a resume to Employer Y implying personal sole responsibility for those jointly-designed patented products.
Engineer A was prohibited from structuring his resume to imply that he personally and solely was responsible for the design of the patented products that were in fact jointly designed by a six-member equal-rank team at Employer X — the implied sole-authorship framing, even without an explicit false claim, constituted an ethical violation of the non-deception and non-misrepresentation provisions of the NSPE Code.
At the time of resume submission to Employer Y and throughout any employment-seeking process
Engineer A Team Contribution Sole Authorship Implication Non-Commission
Team Contribution Sole Authorship Implication Non-Commission Capability
Engineer A was required to possess the capability to recognize that implying sole personal responsibility for the jointly-designed patented products — even without explicitly claiming sole authorship — constitutes an impermissible misrepresentation of his qualifications to Employer Y
Engineer A seeking employment with Employer Y submitted a resume implying sole design credit for products jointly designed by a six-member equal-rank team at Employer X
Failure to exercise this capability: Engineer A submitted a resume implying personal sole responsibility for products designed by a six-member team
Engineer A Team Effort Acknowledgment Resume Section III.10.a
BER found Engineer A violated Section III.10.a by failing to give due credit to the five other staff engineers who worked with him in designing the patented products; BER clarified that compliance required noting the team effort, not necessarily naming all five engineers
Engineer A was constrained by NSPE Code Section III.10.a to express on his resume that the design work attributed to him was performed as a result of a team effort rather than an individual effort, with the constraint satisfied by noting the team nature of the work without necessarily naming the five other engineers individually.
NSPE Code Section III.10.a (now repealed); BER Case No. 86-6
Finally, we note that by his conduct, Engineer A appears to have been in violation of Section III.10.a. by failing to provide due credit to those five other staff engineers who worked with Engineer A in designing certain products.
By noting such, we believe that in the context of the fact in this case, Engineer A would be in compliance with the spirit and intent of Section III.10.a.
While we certainly are not suggesting that Engineer A indicate the names of the five other engineers on his employment resume, we do believe that Engineer A has an obligation to express the fact that the design work was performed as a result of a team effort as opposed to an individual effort.
Engineer A's employment at Employer X (team design work) before Engineer A seeking employment with Employer Y
Engineer A is seeking employment with Employer Y. As an employee for Employer X, Engineer A was a staff engineer...Engineer A submits his resume to Employer Y
Engineer A's employment at Employer X (team design work)
Engineer A seeking employment with Employer Y
Engineer A's team design work at Employer X before Engineer A's resume submission to Employer Y
While working for Employer X, Engineer A along with five other engineers in his team participated in and was credited with the design of a series of patented products. Engineer A submits his resume to Employer Y
Engineer A's team design work at Employer X
Engineer A's resume submission to Employer Y
Engineer in Case 79-5 receiving BS degree (1940) before Engineer receiving PE registration
received a Bachelor of Science degree in 1940 from a recognized engineering curriculum and was subsequently registered as a professional engineer in two states
Engineer in Case 79-5 receiving BS degree (1940)
Engineer receiving PE registration before Engineer receiving Professional Degree
was subsequently registered as a professional engineer in two states. Later he was awarded an earned 'Professional Degree' from the same institution
Engineer receiving Professional Degree before Engineer receiving Ph.D. from diploma mill (1960)
Later he was awarded an earned 'Professional Degree'...In 1960 he received a Ph.D. degree from an organization which awarded degrees on the basis of correspondence
Engineer receiving Ph.D. from diploma mill (1960)
Engineer A's conduct is now formally classified as an ethical violation under NSPE standards; the misrepresentation is a matter of professional record; Engineer A faces potential professional consequences including disciplinary action, reputational damage, and obligations to correct the record with Employer Y.
At the conclusion of the NSPE Board's review (present/case resolution)
The NSPE Board of Ethical Review applied Section II.5.a of the NSPE Code to Engineer A's conduct and issued a formal finding that submitting a resume implying sole authorship of collaboratively designed patented products was unethical. This outcome represents the official professional judgment that Engineer A's actions violated binding ethical standards.
{'team_size': 'Five engineers (excluding Engineer A)', 'rank': 'Equal rank staff engineers', 'credit_type': 'Shared patent credit for jointly designed products'}
The five other staff engineers of equal rank who jointly participated in and were credited with the design of the patented products, whose collective contributions are misrepresented by Engineer A's resume implying sole personal responsibility.
{'type': 'employee_of', 'target': 'Employer X Former Engineering Employer'}
{'type': 'peer_of', 'target': 'Engineer A Collaborative Credit Misrepresenting Job-Seeking Engineer'}
five other staff engineers of equal rank
products which were actually designed through a joint effort of the members of the team
Five Staff Engineers Joint Design Team Members
{'team_size': 'Six members including Engineer A', 'credit_status': "Omitted from Engineer A's resume representation", 'code_section': 'NSPE III.10.a'}
Five staff engineers who jointly designed products with Engineer A and whose collaborative contributions were omitted and obscured by Engineer A's resume, entitling them to due credit under NSPE Code Section III.10.a.
{'type': 'peer', 'target': 'Engineer A Collaborative Credit Misrepresenting Job-Seeking Engineer'}
those five other staff engineers who worked with Engineer A in designing certain products
Engineer A has an obligation to express the fact that the design work was performed as a result of a team effort
the design work was performed as a result of a team effort as opposed to an individual effort
Employer Y might overestimate Engineer A's independent design capabilities
Employer Y would be misled about the actual scope of Engineer A's individual contributions
Five co-engineers would be denied due credit for their equal contributions
Present credentials in the most individually impressive manner to maximize competitive advantage with Employer Y and increase likelihood of being hired
Knowledge of ethical obligations regarding credential representation
Resume preparation phase, prior to submission to Employer Y
Duty not to deceive public or clients about professional competence and role
General duty of honesty and non-deception toward prospective employers
NSPE Code Section II.5.a: prohibition on misrepresentation of professional qualifications, including intentional implications designed to obscure truth
NSPE Code Section III.10.a, obligation to give due credit to other engineers for their contributions to joint work
Engineer A deliberately crafted his resume to imply personal, individual responsibility for the design of patented products that were in fact the result of a six-person team effort. Rather than stating an outright falsehood, Engineer A chose language and framing that obscured the collaborative nature of the work.
John Doe Case 72-11 Resume Selective Emphasis Boundary Discrimination
John Doe in Case 72-11 was required to correctly distinguish between permissible selective emphasis of minor managerial experience to obtain a managerial role and impermissible misrepresentation of his qualifications, with the BER finding his conduct fell within the permissible emphasis category
Aerospace design engineer laid off after 12 years who rewrote resume to emphasize minor managerial experience; BER found this permissible as a degree of emphasis
BER Case 72-11 found that emphasizing minor managerial/administrative experience to obtain a managerial position constituted permissible selective emphasis rather than impermissible misrepresentation
John Doe Case 72-11 Resume Selective Emphasis vs Misrepresentation Boundary Compliance
John Doe demonstrated the capability to remain within the permissible zone of selective emphasis — emphasizing minor managerial experience to obtain a managerial role — without crossing into impermissible misrepresentation, as the Board found his conduct condoned as a degree of emphasis rather than exaggeration.
Aerospace engineer laid off after 12 years who rewrote resume to emphasize managerial experience after repeated rejections for technical positions
Rewriting resume to emphasize minor managerial and administrative experience while downplaying technical design expertise, remaining within the permissible selective emphasis zone recognized by the Board under old Code 3(e)
In concluding that Doe was not in violation of the Code for rewriting his employment resume in this manner, we were inclined to the more charitable view that Doe's action can be condoned as something less than an 'exaggeration' in that it more nearly might be considered a degree of emphasis
In Case 72-11, we found that Doe could truthfully show some degree of competence in the managerial and administrative technical areas of the employment even though Doe strongly emphasized its extent and level
Employer Y now holds a materially false belief about Engineer A's individual design contributions; the employment decision-making process is corrupted by inaccurate information; a professional ethics violation is now complete and externally consequential.
During Engineer A's job application process to Employer Y
Employer Y received Engineer A's resume, which implied sole personal responsibility for designs that were in fact collaborative team efforts, thereby creating a false impression in the mind of a prospective employer. This outcome marks the point at which the misrepresentation moved from intent to concrete effect on a third party.
Misrepresentation in Business Dealings Standard
Engineer A during employment solicitation with Employer Y
Applies to Engineer A's act of implying sole personal responsibility for jointly designed patented products in a resume submitted during employment negotiations with Employer Y — a professional business dealing in which false or misleading statements are prohibited
National Society of Professional Engineers
NSPE Code of Ethics for Engineers – Former Section 3(c) / 3(e)
Case 72-11 had been decided under old Code provision 3(e) which had since been expanded to embrace 'misleading, deceptive or false statements regarding professional qualifications' rather than merely 'exaggerated statements of qualifications.'
NSPE Board of Ethical Review in tracing doctrinal evolution from Case 72-11 through Case 79-5
Referenced historically to trace the evolution of the Code's prohibition on qualification misrepresentation, from 'exaggerated statements' to 'misleading, deceptive or false statements'
NSPE Code Progressive Amendment Stricter Resume Standard Case 86-6
BER traced the evolution of the qualification misrepresentation prohibition from 'exaggerated statements' (old 3(c)) to 'misleading, deceptive or false statements' (3(e)) to the current affirmative prohibition in Section II.5.a, applying the strictest current standard to Engineer A's conduct
Progressive Ethics Code Tightening Stricter Resume Standard Imposition Constraint
The BER was constrained to apply the current, most restrictive version of the NSPE Code (Section II.5.a) to Engineer A's resume conduct rather than the more permissive standards of prior code iterations (old Section 3(c) or 3(e)), because each successive amendment progressively restricted the representations engineers may make in resumes and professional self-presentations; Engineer A was correspondingly constrained to meet the stricter current standard rather than the more permissive standard under which Case 72-11 was decided.
NSPE Code Section II.5.a; BER Cases 72-11, 79-5, 86-6
Since our decision in Case 79-5, the NSPE Code of Ethics has again been modified. The Code language appears to restrict even further the representations which engineers may make in resumes, brochures, correspondence, etc.
At the time of Engineer A's resume submission to Employer Y, under the then-current NSPE Code Section II.5.a
New Section II.5.a. specifically addresses the issue of professional qualification misrepresentation.
A binding, codified rule now exists within the NSPE Code explicitly governing the representation of collaborative work; the ethical standard is no longer merely precedent-based but formally codified, providing clear notice to all NSPE members and creating a definitive basis for ethical findings.
After 1979, prior to the Board's review of Engineer A's case
Subsequent revisions to the NSPE Code of Ethics culminated in the adoption of Section II.5.a, which explicitly prohibits engineers from misrepresenting their professional qualifications or falsely implying sole credit for collaborative work. This exogenous regulatory event established the formal rule that the Board applied to find Engineer A's conduct unethical.
NSPE Code Section II.5.a Enacted → Ethical Violation Finding Issued
The NSPE Board of Ethical Review applied Section II.5.a of the NSPE Code to Engineer A's conduct and issued a finding that the misleading resume representation constituted an ethical violation under the enacted standard
Without Section II.5.a (i.e., if only the more permissive 1972 standard applied), the finding might not have been issued, or might have been limited; without Engineer A's misleading resume, there would be no conduct to evaluate under the standard
Engineer A's prior act of submitting a misleading resume
Existence of Section II.5.a as an enacted, binding ethical standard
The NSPE Board's jurisdiction to review Engineer A's professional conduct
The factual record establishing that the resume implied sole authorship of collaborative work
Engineer A (primary); NSPE Board of Ethical Review (adjudicatory)
Section II.5.a's prohibition on misleading resume representations, combined with the documented fact that Engineer A's resume implied sole authorship of a six-member team's work, was sufficient to support the violation finding
NSPE Code of Ethics for Engineers – Section III.10.a
Engineer A appears to have been in violation of Section III.10.a. by failing to provide due credit to those five other staff engineers who worked with Engineer A in designing certain products.
NSPE Board of Ethical Review in analyzing Engineer A's credit attribution obligations
Cited as the basis for Engineer A's obligation to give due credit to the five other staff engineers who contributed to the design work, requiring acknowledgment of team effort on resume
Version applicable at time of case (subsequently removed)
NSPE Code of Ethics for Engineers – Section II.5.a
NSPE Board of Ethical Review in analyzing Engineer A's resume conduct
Cited as the primary normative authority prohibiting misrepresentation of professional qualifications in resumes, brochures, and correspondence; interpreted to cover implied misrepresentations not just explicit false statements
Current revision at time of case (post-Case 79-5 amendment)
Engineer A submits his resume to Employer Y and on it implies that he personally was responsible for the design of products which were actually designed through a joint effort
Engineer A (as obligation bearer); ethics reviewers assessing the resume misrepresentation
Primary normative authority governing Engineer A's obligation to represent his qualifications honestly when seeking employment with Employer Y; prohibits false or misleading statements about professional contributions
NSPE Code revision introducing Section II.5.a before Engineer A submitting resume to Employer Y
We interpret Section II.5.a. to prohibit Engineer A to imply on his resume that he was personally responsible for the design of products
Engineer A submitting resume to Employer Y
Employer Y would have no basis to understand that the design work reflected team rather than individual capability
Five co-engineers would receive no acknowledgment of their equal contributions
Avoid diluting the apparent individual impact of the listed design achievements by omitting reference to the collaborative team structure
Ethical judgment in professional self-representation
Understanding of credit attribution norms in engineering
Duty of honesty regarding the nature and scope of one's individual professional contributions
NSPE Code Section III.10.a, obligation to give due credit to engineers for their contributions to engineering work
Professional norm of collegial acknowledgment of shared intellectual contribution
Engineer A made the specific decision to omit any acknowledgment that the patented product designs were the result of a six-person team effort, failing to give due credit to the five co-engineers of equal rank who contributed equally to the work. This omission was a distinct volitional choice embedded within the resume preparation process.
Omitting Team Credit Attribution → Implying Sole Resume Authorship
Engineer A made the specific decision to omit any acknowledgment that the patented product designs were team efforts, which combined with deliberate framing caused the resume to imply personal, individual responsibility for the designs
Had Engineer A included standard attribution language acknowledging team participation, the resume would not have implied sole authorship even if individual contributions were emphasized
Affirmative framing of contributions in first-person singular terms
Deliberate choice to exclude team attribution language
Engineer A's intent to present credentials favorably to Employer Y
Engineer A's knowledge that designs were collaborative
No qualifying language such as 'as part of a team' or 'among six engineers'
Omission of team credit combined with first-person singular framing of collaborative work
Engineer A when preparing and submitting resume to Employer Y
Governs Engineer A's obligation to accurately represent his qualifications, experience, and individual contributions when submitting a resume to Employer Y; prohibits overstating personal responsibility for team-designed patented products
Was it ethical for Engineer A to imply on his resume that he was personally responsible for the design of the products which were actually designed through the joint efforts of the members of the design team?
Does the ethical analysis change if Engineer A made a unique or disproportionately large contribution to the joint design work, even though all six engineers held equal formal rank and shared patent credit?
What affirmative obligation, if any, does Engineer A have to proactively disclose the team composition and each member's relative contribution on his resume, beyond merely refraining from implying sole authorship?
Does Employer Y bear any independent ethical or professional responsibility to verify the accuracy of resume claims before making a hiring decision based on them, and does that responsibility mitigate or shift any portion of Engineer A's ethical culpability?
Are there professional consequences beyond the ethical finding — such as disciplinary action, license revocation, or civil liability — that should attach to Engineer A's resume misrepresentation, and does the Board's analysis adequately address the downstream harms to the five co-designers whose contributions were erased?
Does the principle permitting contextual resume emphasis — as established in Case 72-11 — conflict with the prohibition on technically true but misleading statements when an engineer selectively foregrounds his participation in joint work without explicitly claiming sole authorship but without disclosing team composition?
How should the principle of calibrating ethical severity based on intentional versus inadvertent misrepresentation be reconciled with the principle that omission of a material fact — regardless of intent — constitutes a prohibited misrepresentation under the progressive code standard?
Does the principle protecting employers from deceptive resume representations — which focuses on Employer Y's right to accurate information — conflict with the principle of intellectual integrity in authorship — which focuses on the five co-designers' right to credit — and if so, which interest should drive the ethical analysis?
Does the principle that competitive employment pressure provides no justification for misrepresentation conflict with the principle of omission materiality threshold — in that the threshold for what constitutes a material omission may itself be influenced by the competitive norms of the employment market in which resumes are evaluated?
From a deontological perspective, did Engineer A fulfill their categorical duty of honesty by implying sole authorship of jointly designed patented products on their resume, regardless of whether the implication was strategically advantageous in a competitive job market?
From a consequentialist standpoint, did the aggregate harm caused by Engineer A's misleading resume — including erosion of trust in engineering credentials, disadvantage to five co-designers whose contributions were erased, and potential misallocation of Employer Y's hiring decision — outweigh any personal career benefit Engineer A might have gained?
From a virtue ethics perspective, did Engineer A demonstrate the professional integrity and intellectual honesty expected of a licensed engineer when they chose to structure their resume in a way that obscured the collaborative nature of their design work, and what does this choice reveal about their character as a professional?
From a deontological perspective, does the NSPE Code's progressive tightening of resume representation standards — from prohibiting false statements to prohibiting misleading implications — reflect a Kantian recognition that the duty of honesty extends not merely to literal truth but to the reasonable inferences a recipient will draw, and did Engineer A violate this expanded duty?
Would Engineer A's resume have been considered ethically compliant if, instead of implying sole authorship, they had listed the patented products with an explicit parenthetical notation such as 'co-designed with a five-member engineering team,' thereby preserving accurate credit attribution while still highlighting their personal contribution?
What if Engineer A had submitted the same misleading resume but Employer Y had independently verified the team-based nature of the design work through reference checks before making a hiring decision — would the ethical violation still stand even if no practical harm to Employer Y resulted?
Had Engineer A been the lead designer among the six-member team — holding a formally recognized coordinating role even if equal in rank — would the ethical calculus regarding implied sole authorship have shifted, and at what threshold of individual contribution does implying primary responsibility become permissible rather than misleading?
If Engineer A had disclosed the team-based nature of the design work verbally during the job interview with Employer Y rather than correcting the resume itself, would that subsequent oral clarification have retroactively cured the ethical violation embedded in the written resume submission, or does the initial act of submitting a misleading document constitute an independent and irremediable breach?
Resume Employer Screening Function Non-Deception Protective Purpose Constraint
BER articulated the protective purpose of the non-deception provision in the resume context — protecting employers from being tricked into entrusting important engineering decisions to unqualified persons — as the normative foundation for evaluating the permissible boundary of resume emphasis
Engineers are constrained in their resume representations by the protective purpose of the non-deception provision — which exists to protect prospective employers from being deceived about an applicant's competence for important engineering decisions — such that any resume representation that would cause a prospective employer to entrust important engineering decisions to one not qualified to make them crosses the permissible boundary of emphasis into impermissible misrepresentation.
NSPE Code Section II.5.a; BER Case No. 72-11 (protective purpose analysis); BER Case No. 86-6
The purpose of then Section 3(c) was to protect a prospective employer from being deceived as to the competence of an engineer-applicant in order that the employer not be tricked into entrusting important engineering decisions to one not qualified to make them.
Whenever an engineer prepares and submits a resume or professional qualification statement to a prospective employer
The importance of the employment resume cannot be overstated. It should therefore not be surprising that the contents of a resume can have an enormous impact upon the success of an employment applicant being considered for a position.
Employer Y's hiring decision would be based on a materially inaccurate understanding of Engineer A's individual versus collaborative design capabilities
If hired, Employer Y might assign Engineer A to independent design responsibilities exceeding his demonstrated individual capacity
Secure employment with Employer Y by presenting credentials that would make the strongest individual impression on hiring decision-makers
Understanding of credential representation standards
At point of application submission to Employer Y
Duty of candor and honesty in professional communications with prospective employers
NSPE Code Section II.5.a, prohibition on misrepresentation of professional qualifications through misleading implication
NSPE Code Section III.10.a, failure to give due credit to five co-engineers
Obligation not to deceive employers about competence in ways that could lead to entrustment of work beyond demonstrated individual capability
Engineer A submitted the deliberately crafted resume to Employer Y, completing the act of misrepresentation by transmitting the document implying sole authorship of team-designed patented products to a prospective employer. This is the consummating volitional act that exposed Employer Y to deception.
Submitting Misleading Resume → Misleading Resume Received
Engineer A submitted the deliberately crafted resume to Employer Y, completing the act of misrepresentation and directly causing Employer Y to receive a document implying sole personal responsibility for collaborative designs
Without the act of submission, Employer Y would not have received the misleading document; without the misleading content, submission alone would cause no ethical harm
Employer Y's active recruitment or openness to receiving applications
Engineer A's volitional act of submission to Employer Y
Prior creation of the misleading resume content
The resume's misleading framing remaining uncorrected at time of submission
Submission of a completed resume containing materially misleading attribution claims to a prospective employer actively evaluating candidates
Defeasibility edge from tensionresolution
source_field=tensionresolution; confidence=0.86
The implication created by listing the degree without qualification was held to cross the line from permissible emphasis into prohibited misleading implication, given the expanded code language
source_field=tensionresolution; confidence=0.84
source_field=tensionresolution; confidence=0.88
source_field=tensionresolution; confidence=0.78
The employer's interest in accurate qualification information and the public's interest in competent engineering practice override the applicant's interest in favorable self-presentation
source_field=tensionresolution; confidence=0.82
The intent element limits the scope of the prohibition, ensuring that engineers are not held ethically culpable for honest mistakes while maintaining accountability for deliberate deception
source_field=tensionresolution; confidence=0.83
source_field=tensionresolution; confidence=0.87
Unlike Case 72-11 where emphasis reflected genuine competence, Engineer A's implication obscured a material fact — the collaborative nature of the design — that the prospective employer needed to accurately assess Engineer A's individual capabilities
source_field=tensionresolution; confidence=0.85
Honesty is a non-negotiable professional virtue; competitive employment pressures do not justify misrepresentation of collaborative achievements
source_field=tensionresolution; confidence=0.91
The Contextual Resume Emphasis Permissibility Principle does not extend to omitting co-equal contributors entirely; Engineer A's conduct is not permissible emphasis but prohibited misrepresentation of collaborative credit
When omitted information is material to the hiring decision, the materiality threshold is crossed and disclosure is ethically required regardless of the engineer's competitive interests
The principle of honesty overrides competitive self-promotion interests; engineers may highlight their contributions but must not imply sole authorship of collaborative work
Attribution integrity requires disclosure of team context; Engineer A may legitimately claim credit for his individual contribution as one of six co-equal designers but not for the whole
Prior permissive outcomes (Case 72-11) are distinguished as decided under narrower code language; current code language requires stricter compliance
source_field=tensionresolution; confidence=0.9
source_field=tensionresolution; confidence=0.92
The Board acknowledges competitive pressure as a mitigating context while maintaining that it cannot justify intentional deception; the degree-of-emphasis permissibility principle marks the outer boundary of what competitive pressure can excuse
source_field=tensionresolution; confidence=0.89
Permissible emphasis distinguished from impermissible misrepresentation by the presence of genuine underlying competence and absence of deliberate intent to obscure truth
source_field=tensionresolution; confidence=0.8
The minimum compliance standard — noting team effort without naming individuals — balances the engineer's legitimate interest in presenting qualifications favorably against the obligation to accurately represent collaborative contributions
expanded Code language (post-Case 72-11, pre-Case 79-5) before New Section II.5.a (post-Case 79-5)
Since our decision in Case 79-5, the NSPE Code of Ethics has again been modified...New Section II.5.a. specifically addresses the issue of professional qualification misrepresentation
expanded Code language (post-Case 72-11, pre-Case 79-5)
old Code provision 3(e) governing Case 72-11 before expanded Code language prohibiting misleading/deceptive statements (governing Case 79-5)
the earlier Case 72-11 had been decided under old Code provision 3(e) which had since been expanded to embrace 'misleading, deceptive or false statements regarding professional qualifications'
old Code provision 3(e) governing Case 72-11
expanded Code language prohibiting misleading/deceptive statements (governing Case 79-5)
Engineer A misrepresents the intellectual origins of the patented products by omitting the material contributions of five co-equal team members, implying that the intellectual and design work was solely his own when it was collectively prod
Engineer A's resume, through selective framing that omits the team context, creates a materially false overall impression that he was the sole or primary designer of the patented products
Engineer A's resume statements about the patented products may be technically accurate in that he did participate in their design, but the framing deliberately creates a false impression of sole personal responsibility
Engineer A's omission of the five co-equal team members from his resume description of the patented products is a material omission because the team composition and Engineer A's individual role within it are directly relevant to Employer Y'
Engineer A omits the five co-equal team members from his resume description of jointly-designed and jointly-patented products, creating the false impression of sole personal design responsibility
Engineer A violated Section III.10.a. by failing to provide due credit to the five other staff engineers who jointly designed the patented products; the Board held that Engineer A had an obligation to express that the design work was a team
John Doe's rewriting of his resume to emphasize minor managerial and administrative experience was held permissible because it reflected a genuine, if minor, aspect of his actual experience and did not deceive the employer as to his actual
The purpose of the ethics code provision against qualification misrepresentation is to protect prospective employers from being deceived as to the competence of an engineer-applicant
Engineer A's resume implied sole personal responsibility for jointly-designed patented products without explicitly stating it; the Board held this implication violated Section II.5.a.
Engineer A's resume fails to provide clear attribution of the team context and his specific role within the six-member design team, instead presenting the jointly-designed and jointly-patented products as if they were his unconditional indi
The foundational professional virtue of honesty requires Engineer A to truthfully represent the collaborative nature of the patented product designs rather than implying sole personal responsibility
Engineer A's resume implies personal sole responsibility for patented products that were jointly designed by a six-member team, constituting a false assurance of individual design capability that misleads Employer Y about the actual scope o
An engineer listing a PhD from a diploma mill among academic qualifications without indicating its nature created a misleading implication that the degree represented genuine academic achievement, violating the expanded code prohibition on
The Board explicitly limits its holding to intentionally misleading statements — like Engineer A's deliberate omission of team credit — and expressly exempts unintentionally false or inaccurate statements from per se ethical violation
The Board notes that since Case 79-5, the NSPE Code has again been modified with Section II.5.a. further restricting permissible representations, and applies this current, more restrictive language to Engineer A's case
The Board acknowledges the intense competitive pressure on job applicants to emphasize favorable qualifications but holds that this pressure does not override the professional honesty obligation to accurately represent qualifications
Engineer A was obligated to assess whether his omission of the five co-equal team members from his resume description of the jointly-patented products constituted a material misrepresentation — recognizing that a reasonable prospective empl
Engineer A was obligated to limit his claims of credit for the patented products designed at Employer X to his specific personal contributions as one of six equal-rank team members, and to disclose the team context and his specific role rat
Engineer A was obligated to refrain from implying on his resume submitted to Employer Y that he personally and solely was responsible for the design of patented products that were in fact jointly designed by a six-member team of equal-rank
Engineer A was obligated to express on his resume that the design work attributed to him was performed as a result of a team effort rather than an individual effort — without necessarily naming the five co-designers
Engineer A was obligated to disclose the team composition — specifically that the patented products were designed by a six-member team of equal-rank staff engineers — when listing those products on his resume submitted to Employer Y
Engineer A was obligated to acknowledge the contributions of the five co-equal team members when listing the jointly-designed and jointly-patented products on his resume, and to refrain from omitting their participation in a manner that cre
Engineer A was obligated to refrain from misrepresenting his qualifications on his resume submitted to Employer Y, including refraining from implying sole personal responsibility for patented products that were jointly designed by a six-mem
The engineer in Case 79-5 was obligated to refrain from listing a diploma-mill PhD among academic qualifications without indicating its nature, as doing so created a misleading implication that the degree was from a legitimate academic inst
Engineer A was obligated to refrain from making artfully misleading statements on his resume — specifically, from framing his participation in jointly-designed patented products in a manner that was technically accurate (he did participate)
The Board was obligated to apply the current, more restrictive NSPE Code Section II.5.a. to Engineer A's conduct rather than the narrower code language under which Case 72-11 was decided, recognizing that the progressive broadening of the c
Engineer A was obligated to refrain from making intentionally misleading statements on his resume — statements designed to obscure the truth about team authorship — recognizing that the ethics prohibition applies to intentional deception an
Engineer A was obligated to refrain from implying on his resume that he was personally and solely responsible for the design of products that were in fact jointly designed by a six-member team, recognizing that intentional implication of so
Engineer A was obligated to refrain from using the competitive employment environment as justification for intentionally obscuring the team nature of the patented product design on his resume, recognizing that competitive pressure does not
John Doe was obligated to ensure that his resume's selective emphasis of managerial and administrative experience remained within the permissible zone — i.e., that the emphasis did not deceive the prospective employer about his actual compe
Engineer A was obligated to assess whether his omission of the five co-equal team members from his resume description of the jointly-patented products constituted a material misrepresentation
Engineer A was obligated to limit his claims of credit for the patented products designed at Employer X to his specific personal contributions as one of six equal-rank team members
The Board was obligated to apply the current, more restrictive NSPE Code Section II.5.a. to Engineer A's conduct rather than the narrower code language under which Case 72-11 was decided
Engineer A was obligated to refrain from making intentionally misleading statements on his resume — statements designed to obscure the truth about team authorship
Engineer A was obligated to refrain from implying on his resume that he was personally and solely responsible for the design of products that were in fact jointly designed by a six-member team
Engineer A was obligated to refrain from using the competitive employment environment as justification for intentionally obscuring the team nature of the patented product design on his resume
Engineer A was obligated to express on his resume that the design work attributed to him was performed as a result of a team effort rather than an individual effort
Employer Y, as a prospective engineering employer evaluating Engineer A's resume, bears a residual obligation to seek clarification of the scope and nature of Engineer A's individual contributions to listed patented products
Engineer A was obligated to acknowledge the contributions of the five co-equal team members when listing the jointly-designed and jointly-patented products on his resume
Employer Y Prospective Engineering Hiring Authority
{'relationship_to_engineer_a': 'Prospective employer', 'decision_context': 'Hiring decision based on resume representations'}
Employer Y is the prospective employer receiving Engineer A's resume containing misrepresentations about individual design credit, and bears obligations to conduct due diligence on candidate qualification representations.
{'type': 'prospective_employer_of', 'target': 'Engineer A Collaborative Credit Misrepresenting Job-Seeking Engineer'}
Engineer A is seeking employment with Employer Y
Engineer A submits his resume to Employer Y
{'credentials': 'BS from recognized curriculum, Professional Degree, fraudulent PhD from diploma mill', 'misrepresentation_type': 'Listing diploma-mill PhD as legitimate academic credential without disclosure', 'outcome': 'Found in violation under Case 79-5', 'code_provision': 'Expanded NSPE Code language on misleading/deceptive/false qualification statements'}
A registered professional engineer who listed a PhD from a diploma mill (correspondence-only, no attendance or study required) among his academic qualifications in brochures and correspondence without disclosing its nature — found by the Board to be unethical under the expanded Code language prohibiting misleading, deceptive, or false statements regarding professional qualifications.
{'type': 'precedent_for', 'target': 'Engineer A Collaborative Credit Misrepresenting Job-Seeking Engineer'}
Resume Misrepresenting Job-Seeking Engineer
he received a Ph.D. degree from an organization which awarded degrees on the basis of correspondence without requiring any form of personal attendance or study at the institution and was regarded by state authorities as a 'diploma mill'
Engineer A At-Will Employment Transition
From the point Engineer A begins seeking new employment through submission of resume to Employer Y
Engineer A's employment relationship — departing Employer X, seeking engagement with Employer Y
Acceptance or rejection of employment by Employer Y
As an employee for Employer X, Engineer A was a staff engineer
Engineer A initiates job search with Employer Y while previously employed at Employer X
John Doe Case 72-11 Resume Misrepresenting Job-Seeking Engineer
{'specialty': 'Aerospace design engineering', 'misrepresentation_type': 'Emphasis of minor managerial experience over primary technical expertise', 'outcome': 'Found not in violation under Case 72-11 analysis', 'code_provision': 'Former NSPE Section 3(e) / 3(c)'}
Aerospace design engineer laid off after 12 years who, after repeated rejections, rewrote his resume to emphasize minor managerial/administrative experience over his primary technical design expertise in order to obtain employment — found by the Board to be a matter of permissible emphasis rather than unethical misrepresentation under the then-applicable Code.
Doe devised a new resume which played down his technical design experience and expertise and emphasized his minor managerial and administrative function
we were inclined to the more charitable view that Doe's action can be condoned as something less than an 'exaggeration' in that it more nearly might be considered a degree of emphasis
Prospective Employer Resume-Deceived Engineering Hiring Firm
{'protected_interest': 'Accurate qualification assessment for engineering role assignment', 'code_protection': 'NSPE Section II.5.a and former Section 3(c)'}
The prospective engineering employer evaluating Engineer A's resume, identified by the Board as the party the Code is designed to protect from deceptive qualification representations, so that engineering responsibilities are not entrusted to unqualified individuals.
{'type': 'evaluating_applicant', 'target': 'Engineer A Collaborative Credit Misrepresenting Job-Seeking Engineer'}
Resume-Deceived Prospective Engineering Employer
From Doe's repeated rejection for positions through his rewriting of the resume and obtaining new employment
Doe devised a new resume which played down his technical design experience and expertise and emphasized his minor managerial and administrative function in his former employment as an important responsibility
Resume Experience Emphasis Reframing State
Engineer Doe's employment resume restructuring to emphasize minor managerial experience over dominant technical design background
Doe obtaining new employment in his general field of technical expertise
this is an established and accepted form of sales technique in which the seller proclaims all of the virtues of his product and conveniently ignores its less desirable features
Employment counselor advice that Doe's only opportunity lay in management/administration roles, combined with repeated rejection due to resume showing lack of such experience
Engineer A Employment-Seeking Resume Omission Materiality Self-Assessment
Engineer A fails to assess or disregards the materiality of omitting five co-equal co-designers from his resume description of jointly-patented products, submitting a resume that creates a materially false impression of sole design responsibility.
Employment-Seeking Resume Omission Materiality Self-Assessment Obligation
Engineer A was obligated to assess whether his omission of the five co-equal team members from his resume description of the jointly-patented products constituted a material misrepresentation — recognizing that a reasonable prospective employer would consider the existence of five co-equal co-designers highly significant in evaluating his individual qualifications — and to correct the omission before submitting the resume to Employer Y.
This team of six was responsible for the design of certain products.
Prior to and at the time of submitting the resume to Employer Y
Engineer A submits his resume to Employer Y and on it implies that he personally was responsible for the design of products which were actually designed through a joint effort of the members of the team.
Engineer A Failure to Credit Design Team Members
From submission of resume through Board determination
Implied Sole Credit Misrepresentation State
Engineer A's omission of any acknowledgment that design work was a team effort, failing to provide due credit to five co-engineers
Board's determination and guidance that Engineer A must express that design work was performed as a team effort
Engineer A has an obligation to express the fact that the design work was performed as a result of a team effort as opposed to an individual effort
Engineer A presenting team-designed products without indicating collaborative authorship, in violation of Section III.10.a
Engineer A Intentional vs Unintentional Misrepresentation Distinction
Throughout the Board's deliberation on Engineer A's resume conduct
we do not mean to suggest that unintentionally false or inaccurate statements would be unethical per se
Intent-Differentiated Marketing Misrepresentation Assessment State
Board's ethical evaluation of Engineer A's resume conduct turning on whether the misleading implication was intentional or inadvertent
Board's conclusion that Engineer A's statements were intentionally designed to mislead
we are referring to statements such as those made by Engineer A which are intentionally designed to mislead a potential employer by obscuring the truth
Board's need to distinguish between unintentionally false or inaccurate statements (not per se unethical) and intentionally misleading statements (unethical)
Engineer A Prior-Employer Patent Credit Scope Limitation Resume
Engineer A lists jointly-patented products from his employment at Employer X on his resume without disclosing the team context or his specific role, implying sole or primary design credit for work that was equally shared among six engineers.
Prior-Employer Project Credit Scope Limitation Obligation
Engineer A was obligated to limit his claims of credit for the patented products designed at Employer X to his specific personal contributions as one of six equal-rank team members, and to disclose the team context and his specific role rather than claiming undifferentiated credit for the full jointly-designed product line.
As an employee for Employer X, Engineer A was a staff engineer along with five other staff engineers of equal rank.
At the time of preparing and submitting the resume to Employer Y
Engineer A along with five other engineers in his team participated in and was credited with the design of a series of patented products.
Engineer A Team Effort Acknowledgment in Resume Design Credit
Engineer A listed jointly-patented products on his resume without any indication that the design was a team effort involving five co-equal staff engineers, violating his duty to give due credit under NSPE Code Section III.10.a.
Team Effort Acknowledgment in Resume Design Credit Obligation
Engineer A was obligated to express on his resume that the design work attributed to him was performed as a result of a team effort rather than an individual effort — without necessarily naming the five co-designers — so that Employer Y could accurately assess his individual contribution to the jointly-patented products.
we note that by his conduct, Engineer A appears to have been in violation of Section III.10.a. by failing to provide due credit to those five other staff engineers who worked with Engineer A in designing certain products.
Honesty in Professional Representations — Employer Protection Purpose
Engineering employment resume qualification representations
Competitive employment pressure on job applicants
The purpose of the ethics code provision against qualification misrepresentation is to protect prospective employers from being deceived as to the competence of an engineer-applicant, so that the employer is not tricked into entrusting important engineering decisions to one not qualified to make them
The employer-protection rationale grounds the honesty obligation in the practical harm of misrepresentation — placing unqualified engineers in positions of engineering responsibility — not merely in abstract truthfulness norms
Intellectual Integrity in Authorship Violated by Omission of Co-Designers
Engineer A's resume submitted to Employer Y
Patented products jointly designed by six-member team
Competitive employment-seeking interests
Engineer A misrepresents the intellectual origins of the patented products by omitting the material contributions of five co-equal team members, implying that the intellectual and design work was solely his own when it was collectively produced
Intellectual integrity in authorship requires that engineers accurately represent not only that they contributed to a work product, but that others contributed equally; the omission of co-inventors and co-designers from a resume description of jointly-patented products violates the principle's requirement to avoid misrepresentation that the work is solely or independently one's own
Engineer A Collaborative Credit Misrepresenting Job-Seeking Engineer
Intellectual integrity is not negotiable in the employment-seeking context; the fact that co-contributors are not present to assert their credit makes accurate attribution more, not less, important
Joint Team Design Credit Held by Six Engineers
Persists from the time the patented products were jointly designed; ongoing background fact at time of resume submission
The factual state of shared, equal design credit among six staff engineers for a series of patented products at Employer X
Completion and patent registration of products designed by the six-member team
Resume Selective Emphasis Misrepresentation Prohibition Applied to Engineer A
Description of patented product design work
Contextual Resume Emphasis Permissibility Principle
Engineer A's resume, through selective framing that omits the team context, creates a materially false overall impression that he was the sole or primary designer of the patented products, even if individual statements about his participation are technically accurate
The prohibition on selective emphasis misrepresentation applies with full force when an engineer omits the collaborative team context from descriptions of joint work; the overall portrait conveyed — sole designer — does not correspond to the actual experience — one of six co-equal contributors
Resume Selective Emphasis Misrepresentation Prohibition
The Contextual Resume Emphasis Permissibility Principle permits favorable framing of genuine individual contributions but does not permit omitting co-equal team members' roles entirely; Engineer A's conduct exceeds permissible emphasis and constitutes prohibited misrepresentation
Technically True But Misleading Statement Prohibition Applied to Engineer A Resume
Engineer A's resume statements about the patented products may be technically accurate in that he did participate in their design, but the framing deliberately creates a false impression of sole personal responsibility, exploiting the literal truth of his participation to obscure the collaborative reality
The ethical standard is not whether each statement is literally true but whether the overall impression conveyed is accurate; implying sole responsibility through selective framing while technically having participated in the design constitutes the type of artful deception this principle prohibits
Technically True But Misleading Statement Prohibition
The prohibition on technically-true-but-misleading statements applies regardless of the employment-seeking context; the overall impression of sole authorship is false and therefore unethical
Employer Y Resume-Deceived Prospective Employer Obligation to Verify Qualifications
Employer Y receives Engineer A's resume implying sole personal responsibility for jointly-designed patented products and is the party the NSPE Code is designed to protect from deceptive qualification representations in employment-seeking contexts.
Employer Y, as a prospective engineering employer evaluating Engineer A's resume, bears a residual obligation to seek clarification of the scope and nature of Engineer A's individual contributions to listed patented products when the resume language is ambiguous as to team versus individual design responsibility.
During the evaluation of Engineer A's resume and qualification claims
Engineer A Team-Designed Patent Sole-Authorship Implication Prohibition Resume Submission
Engineer A submits a resume to Employer Y implying personal sole responsibility for patented products that were jointly designed by himself and five other equal-rank staff engineers at Employer X.
Resume Team Contribution Sole Authorship Misrepresentation Prohibition Obligation
Engineer A was obligated to refrain from implying on his resume submitted to Employer Y that he personally and solely was responsible for the design of patented products that were in fact jointly designed by a six-member team of equal-rank staff engineers at Employer X.
Omission Materiality Threshold Applied to Team Composition Omission
Employer Y's hiring decision based on Engineer A's resume
Engineer's right to present qualifications favorably
Engineer A's omission of the five co-equal team members from his resume description of the patented products is a material omission because the team composition and Engineer A's individual role within it are directly relevant to Employer Y's assessment of Engineer A's independent design capabilities and hiring decision
The omission of co-equal team members' contributions crosses the materiality threshold because a prospective employer's assessment of an engineer's individual design capability — the very basis for the hiring decision — would be materially affected by knowing that the listed achievements were collaborative rather than individual; this is not a non-material omission
Omission Materiality Threshold in Professional Disclosure
Collaborative Credit Omission Misrepresentation Prohibition Applied to Engineer A Resume
Six-member team's jointly-designed patented products
Engineer A omits the five co-equal team members from his resume description of jointly-designed and jointly-patented products, creating the false impression of sole personal design responsibility for work that was explicitly credited to a six-member team, in order to enhance his employment prospects with Employer Y
This case is the paradigmatic instance of collaborative credit omission misrepresentation: Engineer A was one of six co-equal contributors, was explicitly credited as such, and yet presented the work as his personal individual achievement; the principle requires that he identify the team context and his role within it
Collaborative Credit Omission Misrepresentation Prohibition in Employment Seeking
Contextual Resume Emphasis Permissibility — Case 72-11 John Doe
Resume rewriting to emphasize managerial experience over technical design background
John Doe's rewriting of his resume to emphasize minor managerial and administrative experience was held permissible because it reflected a genuine, if minor, aspect of his actual experience and did not deceive the employer as to his actual competence to perform the role sought
The Board characterized Doe's emphasis as 'something less than an exaggeration' and 'a degree of emphasis' — an established and accepted sales technique — because Doe could truthfully show some degree of competence in the areas emphasized, and the employer was not misled as to competence for the role
we emphasized that what we said in Case 72-11 was a matter of degree
we found that Doe could truthfully show some degree of competence in the managerial and administrative technical areas of the employment even though Doe strongly emphasized its extent and level
Engineer A Joint Patent Team Composition Disclosure Resume Employer Y
Engineer A lists jointly-patented products on his resume without disclosing that five other equal-rank engineers participated equally in their design, depriving Employer Y of the information needed to accurately assess his individual inventive contribution.
Joint Patent Team Composition Disclosure in Resume Obligation
Engineer A was obligated to disclose the team composition — specifically that the patented products were designed by a six-member team of equal-rank staff engineers — when listing those products on his resume submitted to Employer Y, so that Employer Y could accurately assess his individual contribution to the patented work.
Qualification Proposal Attribution Integrity Applied to Team-Designed Patents
Patented products designed at Employer X
Engineer A's resume fails to provide clear attribution of the team context and his specific role within the six-member design team, instead presenting the jointly-designed and jointly-patented products as if they were his unconditional individual accomplishment
Attribution integrity requires that when engineers list prior-employer work products on qualification documents, they accurately represent not only the prior employer context but also the collaborative team structure that produced the work; omitting co-equal team members' roles misrepresents the engineer's unconditional ownership of the intellectual achievement
Qualification Proposal Attribution Integrity
While working for Employer X, Engineer A along with five other engineers in his team participated in and was credited with the design of a series of patented products
Honesty Principle Invoked Against Engineer A Collaborative Misrepresentation
The foundational professional virtue of honesty requires Engineer A to truthfully represent the collaborative nature of the patented product designs rather than implying sole personal responsibility; honesty as a core professional virtue is violated by the resume's misleading framing
Honesty as a canonical professional virtue principle applies at the most foundational level to Engineer A's conduct; regardless of the specific rule invoked, the basic obligation of truthfulness in professional self-representation is violated when an engineer implies sole credit for collaborative work
Honesty in Professional Representations Violated by Engineer A Resume Submission
Patented products designed by six-member team at Employer X
Legitimate self-promotion in competitive employment market
Engineer A's resume implies personal sole responsibility for patented products that were jointly designed by a six-member team, constituting a false assurance of individual design capability that misleads Employer Y about the actual scope of Engineer A's independent contributions
Honesty in professional representations requires that engineers accurately portray not only what they did, but the collaborative context in which they did it; implying sole authorship of joint work is a form of dishonest self-representation even if no individual statement is literally false
Case 79-5 Diploma Mill PhD Engineer Resume Implication-Based Misrepresentation
A registered PE listed a PhD from a diploma mill (correspondence-only, no attendance or study required) among academic qualifications without indicating its nature, creating a false impression of legitimate doctoral credentials.
Resume Implication-Based Misrepresentation Prohibition Obligation
The engineer in Case 79-5 was obligated to refrain from listing a diploma-mill PhD among academic qualifications without indicating its nature, as doing so created a misleading implication that the degree was from a legitimate academic institution — constituting misrepresentation under the then-current broader code language prohibiting 'misleading, deceptive or false statements regarding professional qualifications.'
At the time of listing the PhD in brochures, correspondence, and otherwise (Case 79-5)
we noted that the earlier Case 72-11 had been decided under old Code provision 3(e) which had since been expanded to embrace 'misleading, deceptive or false statements regarding professional qualifications' rather than merely 'exaggerated statements of qualifications.'
Collaborative Credit Omission — Engineer A Failure to Credit Five Co-Designers
Resume attribution of jointly-designed patented products
Engineer A violated Section III.10.a. by failing to provide due credit to the five other staff engineers who jointly designed the patented products; the Board held that Engineer A had an obligation to express that the design work was a team effort, though not necessarily to name the individual team members
The obligation to credit collaborative work does not require naming co-contributors on a resume, but does require acknowledging the team-based nature of the work rather than allowing an individual-credit implication to stand
While we certainly are not suggesting that Engineer A indicate the names of the five other engineers on his employment resume, we do believe that Engineer A has an obligation to express the fact that the design work was performed as a result of a team effort as opposed to an individual effort
Diploma Mill PhD Implication — Case 79-5 Misrepresentation by Omission of Nature
Academic credential listing in professional brochures and correspondence
An engineer listing a PhD from a diploma mill among academic qualifications without indicating its nature created a misleading implication that the degree represented genuine academic achievement, violating the expanded code prohibition on misleading, deceptive, or false statements regarding professional qualifications
The listing of the diploma mill PhD, while literally accurate as a statement of degree receipt, created a false implication about the nature and rigor of the academic credential; the Board held that the expanded code language required disclosure of the degree's nature to prevent misleading implication
Implication-as-Misrepresentation in Professional Qualification Documents
Engineer A Artfully Misleading Resume Implication Prohibition
Engineer A's resume language implies personal responsibility for jointly-designed products without making an outright false statement, exploiting the partial truth of his participation to mislead Employer Y about the nature and scope of his individual contribution.
Artfully Misleading Statement Prohibition Obligation
Engineer A was obligated to refrain from making artfully misleading statements on his resume — specifically, from framing his participation in jointly-designed patented products in a manner that was technically accurate (he did participate) but intentionally structured to create the false impression of sole personal responsibility, thereby obscuring the material fact of joint team design.
Engineer A Co-Designer Credit Omission Five Team Members Resume
Engineer A's resume omits the five other equal-rank staff engineers who jointly participated in and were credited with the design of the patented products, thereby depriving them of professional credit and deceiving Employer Y.
Co-Designer Credit Omission Prohibition in Employment Seeking Obligation
Engineer A was obligated to acknowledge the contributions of the five co-equal team members when listing the jointly-designed and jointly-patented products on his resume, and to refrain from omitting their participation in a manner that created the false impression of sole or primary design responsibility.
Engineer A Implied Sole Credit on Resume
From submission of resume to Employer Y onward, until corrected or withdrawn
Five co-equal team members at Employer X
Engineer A's resume representation of jointly designed patented products as personal individual accomplishments
Correction of resume to accurately reflect collaborative authorship, or withdrawal of application
Engineer A submits resume to Employer Y implying personal sole responsibility for products designed by a six-person team
Engineer A Progressive Ethics Code Broadening Retroactive Non-Application Acknowledgment
The Board distinguished Engineer A's conduct from the permissible emphasis in Case 72-11 by noting that the Code has been progressively amended to restrict further the representations engineers may make, with new Section II.5.a. specifically addressing professional qualification misrepresentation.
Engineer A (and ethics adjudicators evaluating Engineer A's conduct)
Progressive Ethics Code Broadening Retroactive Non-Application Acknowledgment Obligation
The Board was obligated to apply the current, more restrictive NSPE Code Section II.5.a. to Engineer A's conduct rather than the narrower code language under which Case 72-11 was decided, recognizing that the progressive broadening of the code's prohibition on misrepresentation means that conduct permissible under older code language may be prohibited under the current formulation.
At the time of ethics adjudication of Engineer A's resume conduct
Engineer A Qualifications Non-Misrepresentation Resume Submission to Employer Y
Engineer A submits a resume to Employer Y that misrepresents his qualifications by implying sole design responsibility for jointly-patented products, violating the fundamental duty not to falsify or misrepresent one's own qualifications in professional documents.
Qualifications Non-Falsification and Non-Misrepresentation Obligation
Engineer A was obligated to refrain from misrepresenting his qualifications on his resume submitted to Employer Y, including refraining from implying sole personal responsibility for patented products that were jointly designed by a six-member team.
Implication-as-Misrepresentation — Engineer A Sole Credit Implication for Joint Design
Resume presentation of patented products designed by a six-member team
Engineer A's resume implied sole personal responsibility for jointly-designed patented products without explicitly stating it; the Board held this implication violated Section II.5.a. because it was intentionally designed to obscure the collaborative nature of the design work
The term 'misrepresentation' in Section II.5.a. encompasses implications intended to obscure truth, not only explicit false statements; Engineer A's failure to note team authorship while presenting the products as his work created an impermissible implied misrepresentation
Intentional Deception vs. Inadvertent Inaccuracy — Engineer A Deliberate Obscuring of Team Credit
Resume misrepresentation of individual versus collaborative design responsibility
The Board explicitly limits its holding to intentionally misleading statements — like Engineer A's deliberate omission of team credit — and expressly exempts unintentionally false or inaccurate statements from per se ethical violation, grounding culpability in the engineer's deliberate intent to mislead
Ethical culpability for qualification misrepresentation requires deliberate intent to mislead; the Board's holding is carefully scoped to intentional deception, preserving space for inadvertent errors that are corrected upon discovery
Intentional Deception Versus Inadvertent Inaccuracy Distinction in Professional Misrepresentation
we do not mean to suggest that unintentionally false or inaccurate statements would be unethical per se. Instead, we are referring to statements such as those made by Engineer A which are intentionally designed to mislead a potential employer by obscuring the truth
Instead, we are referring to statements such as those made by Engineer A which are intentionally designed to mislead a potential employer by obscuring the truth
Progressive Code Restriction — Section II.5.a. Further Restricts Resume Representations
Evolution of NSPE Code provisions from Section 3(e) through Section 3(c) to Section II.5.a.
The Board notes that since Case 79-5, the NSPE Code has again been modified with Section II.5.a. further restricting permissible representations, and applies this current, more restrictive language to Engineer A's case rather than the narrower standards under which prior cases were decided
Each successive code amendment broadened the prohibition on qualification misrepresentation; the Board applies the current, most restrictive standard to Engineer A's conduct, distinguishing prior permissive outcomes as products of narrower code language
Progressive Ethics Code Restriction Retroactive Inapplicability Principle
The Code language appears to restrict even further the representations which engineers may make in resumes, brochures, correspondence, etc.
Resume Competitive Pressure Context — Employment Environment Framing
Engineering employment resume in competitive job market
The Board acknowledges the intense competitive pressure on job applicants to emphasize favorable qualifications but holds that this pressure does not override the professional honesty obligation to accurately represent qualifications, particularly where the misrepresentation is intentional and material
Competitive employment pressure is a recognized contextual factor that informs the degree-of-emphasis permissibility analysis, but does not excuse intentional misrepresentation designed to obscure material facts about the nature of an engineer's contributions
The importance of the employment resume cannot be overstated.
Engineer A Intentional Deception vs Inadvertent Inaccuracy Distinction Application
The Board explicitly limited its holding to intentionally misleading statements, distinguishing Engineer A's deliberate obscuring of team credit from unintentionally false or inaccurate statements, which the Board stated would not be unethical per se.
Engineer A was obligated to refrain from making intentionally misleading statements on his resume — statements designed to obscure the truth about team authorship — recognizing that the ethics prohibition applies to intentional deception and not merely to inadvertent inaccuracies, and that Engineer A's deliberate omission of team context crossed the line from inadvertent error into intentional misrepresentation.
Engineer A Resume Implication-Based Misrepresentation Prohibition
Engineer A submitted a resume to Employer Y listing jointly-patented products without indicating that the design was performed by a six-member team, creating the false impression of sole personal design responsibility.
Engineer A was obligated to refrain from implying on his resume that he was personally and solely responsible for the design of products that were in fact jointly designed by a six-member team, recognizing that intentional implication of sole authorship — even without an explicit false statement — constitutes misrepresentation under NSPE Code Section II.5.a.
we interpret Section II.5.a. to prohibit Engineer A to imply on his resume that he was personally responsible for the design of products which were actually designed through the joint efforts of the members of the design team.
At the time of resume submission to Employer Y
Engineer A Resume Competitive Pressure Non-Justification for Misrepresentation
The Board acknowledged the intense competitive pressure on job applicants but held that such pressure does not justify Engineer A's intentional obscuring of team credit for jointly-designed products.
Resume Competitive Pressure Non-Justification for Misrepresentation Obligation
Engineer A was obligated to refrain from using the competitive employment environment as justification for intentionally obscuring the team nature of the patented product design on his resume, recognizing that competitive pressure does not constitute an ethical defense for misrepresentation under NSPE Code Section II.5.a.
At the time of resume preparation and submission
John Doe Case 72-11 Selective Emphasis Competence-Deception Boundary Compliance
John Doe, laid off after 12 years as a design engineer, rewrote his resume to emphasize minor managerial experience for management positions. The Board found this permissible because Doe could truthfully show some degree of competence in the emphasized area.
Selective Emphasis Competence-Deception Boundary Compliance Obligation
John Doe was obligated to ensure that his resume's selective emphasis of managerial and administrative experience remained within the permissible zone — i.e., that the emphasis did not deceive the prospective employer about his actual competence for the management role sought — and the Board found he met this obligation because he genuinely possessed some degree of competence in the emphasized area.
At the time of resume rewriting and submission (Case 72-11)
{'current_employer': 'Employer X', 'prospective_employer': 'Employer Y', 'team_rank': 'Staff engineer, equal rank with five peers', 'misrepresentation_type': 'Implied sole authorship of jointly patented designs'}
Engineer A submits a resume to Employer Y implying sole personal responsibility for patented products that were jointly designed by a six-member team at Employer X, constituting a misrepresentation of individual contribution.
{'type': 'applicant_to', 'target': 'Employer Y'}
{'type': 'former_employee_of', 'target': 'Employer X'}
{'type': 'peer', 'target': 'Five-Member Joint Design Team'}
Collaborative Credit Misrepresenting Job-Seeking Engineer