NSPE Board of Ethical Review Case No. 62-14
In Case No. 62-14, dealing with the disbarment of an engineer by the United States Patent Office for advertising to solicit patent business in violation of the rules of the Patent Office, we held that the engineer's action was a violation of the then-prevailing language of the Canons of Ethics
We do not consider at this time whether this application would hold if the violation pertained to conduct not related to engineering practice.
Cited as prior precedent holding that an engineer disbarred by the US Patent Office for advertising to solicit patent business violated the Canons of Ethics (now §3), while explicitly reserving the question of personal misconduct unrelated to engineering practice
NSPE Board of Ethical Review Case No. 68-7
in Case No. 68-7, we similarly considered a case in which an engineer was discharged by his employer for intoxication while in the performance of his duties
We do not deal in this case with the question of whether personal misconduct separate and apart from the performance of professional services would be a violation of the code.
Cited as prior precedent addressing an engineer discharged for intoxication while performing duties, again reserving the question of whether personal misconduct separate from professional services violates the code
BER Case 72-6 Code Expansive Public Confidence Purpose Interpretive Constraint
BER Case 72-6 rejecting the narrow interpretation that Code integrity provisions apply only to professional service conduct, and establishing that the Code's foundational public-confidence purpose requires expansive interpretation
NSPE Board of Ethical Review and all Code interpreters
Public Confidence Engineering Profession Code Expansive Integrity Purpose Constraint
The NSPE BER was constrained to interpret the Code's integrity, honor, and dignity provisions in light of their foundational purpose of ensuring public confidence in the profession, prohibiting narrow interpretations that would allow personal conduct bound to bring disrepute to the profession to escape ethical review.
NSPE Code of Ethics Preamble, §1, §3; BER Case 72-6
But counter to this approach should be a recognition that the basic purpose of a code of ethics is to so regulate and direct the activities of professional practitioners that the public they serve may have confidence in their integrity, honesty and decorous behavior.
Ongoing; applicable to all Code interpretation exercises
It would be incongruous if these kinds of moral imperatives were construed so as to ignore the type of personal behavior which is bound to bring disrepute to the entire profession for the acts of a few without any attempt to impose whatever corrective action is possible so that the public may know that the profession recognizes its obligations to justify public confidence in the profession.
BER Case 72-6 Code Section 3 Honor Dignity Personal Conduct Scope Constraint
BER Case 72-6 definitively establishing that Code §3's prohibition on conduct likely to discredit or unfavorably reflect upon the profession extends to personal criminal misconduct, not merely to professional service conduct
All licensed professional engineers subject to NSPE Code
Personal Misconduct Ethics Code Jurisdiction Constraint
All licensed professional engineers are constrained by Code §3 — requiring avoidance of all conduct or practice likely to discredit or unfavorably reflect upon the dignity or honor of the profession — in their personal conduct, not merely in their professional service activities, as definitively established in BER Case 72-6.
Section 3—'The Engineer will avoid all conduct or practice likely to discredit or unfavorably reflect upon the dignity or honor of the profession.'
Ongoing; applicable throughout the engineer's professional career
Thus it is that the NSPE Code of Ethics embraces language similar to that found in the codes of other professions to the effect stated in §3.
BER Case 72-6 Personal Misconduct Code Jurisdiction Non-Exclusion Resolution
BER Case 72-6 involving Engineer A (theft conviction, probationary fraud) and Engineer B (tax fraud conviction with public professional identification), requiring definitive resolution of the previously twice-reserved question of personal misconduct Code jurisdiction
The NSPE BER was constrained to reject the narrow interpretation that the Code of Ethics applies only to conduct prejudicing professional service performance, and was required to definitively resolve — after reserving the question in Cases 62-14 and 68-7 — that personal misconduct of the kind shown by Engineer A and Engineer B is subject to the Code of Ethics and may be dealt with accordingly.
NSPE Code of Ethics §1, §3, Preamble; BER Cases 62-14, 68-7, 72-6
We are therefore of the view, and are now prepared to state, that personal misconduct of the kind indicated in this case is subject to the Code of Ethics and may be dealt with accordingly under the code in addition to whatever action may be appropriate by legal authorities.
Definitive resolution in BER Case 72-6, binding on all future cases
The case before us directly raises the issue previously reserved in the earlier cases.
BER Case 72-6 Previously Reserved Jurisdiction Question Non-Reopening Constraint
BER Case 72-6 definitively resolving the personal misconduct jurisdiction question after it was explicitly reserved in two prior cases, establishing binding precedent that cannot be reopened by reference to the prior reservations
NSPE Board of Ethical Review and future ethics adjudicators
Previously Reserved Ethics Jurisdiction Question Definitive Resolution Non-Reopening Constraint
Having definitively resolved in BER Case 72-6 the question of personal misconduct Code jurisdiction that was reserved in Cases 62-14 and 68-7, the BER and future ethics adjudicators are constrained from treating that question as still open — the definitive resolution is binding precedent and the prior reservations of judgment cannot be invoked to resist its application.
BER Cases 62-14, 68-7, 72-6; NSPE Code of Ethics
From BER Case 72-6 forward; binding on all future cases presenting the same jurisdictional question
BER Case 72-6 Professional Society Legal Adjudication Predicate Discipline Constraint
BER Case 72-6 establishing the conditions under which professional societies may exercise disciplinary jurisdiction over personal misconduct, grounded in Engineer A's guilty plea to theft and Engineer B's conviction for tax fraud
NSPE and professional engineering societies generally
Professional Society Personal Misconduct Discipline Legal Adjudication Predicate Constraint
Professional engineering societies exercising disciplinary authority over personal misconduct are constrained to ground such discipline in a prior determination by proper legal authority that the conduct is beyond the pale of socially sanctioned behavior — they may take note of official legal findings and act accordingly, but may not independently adjudicate the moral character of purely personal conduct without such a predicate.
NSPE Code of Ethics; BER Case 72-6 Discussion
But when the conduct has been determined by proper legal authority to be beyond the pale of activity sanctioned by society the professional society may take note of such official findings and act accordingly to protect the good name of the profession.
Ongoing; applicable to all professional society disciplinary proceedings involving personal misconduct
BER Case 72-6 Professional Society Personal Conduct Overreach Prohibition
BER Case 72-6 articulating the limiting principle on professional society disciplinary jurisdiction over personal conduct, establishing that the jurisdiction is bounded by the legal adjudication threshold
Professional Society Personal Conduct Overreach Prohibition Constraint
Professional engineering societies are constrained from undertaking to control or decide purely personal habits or conduct of individual members — the disciplinary jurisdiction over personal conduct is bounded by the legal adjudication threshold and does not extend to personal lifestyle choices or private behaviors that have not been officially determined to be beyond socially sanctioned behavior.
Needless to say, professional societies with disciplinary authority must be careful and judicious in dealing with personal activity unrelated to professional services and must not undertake to control or decide purely personal habits or conduct or individuals.
Ongoing; applicable to all professional society disciplinary proceedings
BER Case 72-6 State Registration Law Felony Moral Turpitude Parallel Discipline Constraint
BER Case 72-6 invoking state registration law's broad felony/moral turpitude discipline authority as parallel confirmation of professional society ethics jurisdiction over Engineer A's theft/fraud and Engineer B's tax fraud
NSPE and professional engineering societies
State Registration Law Felony Moral Turpitude Discipline Authority Parallel Ethics Constraint
The NSPE BER was constrained to recognize that state engineering registration laws — which authorize discipline for any felony or crime involving moral turpitude beyond engineering practice transgressions — provide parallel confirmation that professional ethics jurisdiction over personal criminal misconduct is appropriate, prohibiting the argument that professional ethics codes are more narrowly scoped than state registration law in their treatment of personal criminal conduct.
State engineering registration laws; NSPE Code of Ethics; BER Case 72-6
The state engineering registration laws similarly follow these precepts in authorizing the state registration board to discipline a registrant upon conviction for any felony or any crime involving moral turpitude.
Ongoing; applicable to all professional discipline proceedings involving personal criminal misconduct
This broad authority, including suspension or revocation of license, is intended to go beyond transgressions related to the practice of engineering because another part of the state board authority provides for reprimand, suspension or revocation of license for 'misconduct in the practice of his profession.'
NSPE Board of Ethical Review Case — Personal Criminal Misconduct by Engineers
Example 1—Engineer A was charged with the criminal offense of theft in the first degree and pleaded guilty.
Example 2—Engineer B was charged with, tried and convicted of the offense of filing fraudulent income tax returns to the Internal Revenue Service.
Provides precedential ethical reasoning on whether personal criminal conduct (theft, fraud, tax evasion) by licensed engineers constitutes a violation of professional ethics codes, establishing analogical patterns for future similar cases
Case No. 62-14 decision before Case No. 68-7 decision
Case No. 68-7 decision before current case decision
CausalLink_Engineer A Commits Probation F
CausalLink_Engineer B Files Fraudulent Re
CausalLink_NSPE Rules Personal Misconduct
Comparative Case Precedent Distinguishing Obligation Invoked for Cases 62-14 and 68-7
Case No. 62-14 patent office disbarment precedent
Case No. 68-7 intoxication discharge precedent
The BER carefully distinguished Cases 62-14 and 68-7 — where the reserved question of personal misconduct jurisdiction was explicitly noted but not decided — from the present case, which directly raised and resolved that reserved question, demonstrating the obligation to trace precedent carefully and acknowledge when a prior reservation is now being resolved
Prior cases that reserved a question without deciding it must be distinguished from cases that directly raise and resolve that question; the resolution in the present case now fills the gap left by the earlier reservations
NSPE Ethics Committee Disciplinary Authority
Comparative Case Precedent Distinguishing Obligation
No conflict — the BER uses the prior reservations as the doctrinal launching point for the present resolution
In Case No. 62-14 , dealing with the disbarment of an engineer by the United States Patent Office for advertising to solicit patent business in violation of the rules of the Patent Office, we held that the engineer's action was a violation of the then-prevailing language of the Canons of Ethics
The case before us directly raises the issue previously reserved in the earlier cases
we noted in that case: 'We do not consider at this time whether this application would hold if the violation pertained to conduct not related to engineering practice.'
Personal misconduct of the types described is a violation of the Code of Ethics.
Beyond the Board's finding that personal misconduct violates the Code, Engineer A's case presents a compounded and aggravated ethical breach that the Board's single conclusion does not fully capture. Engineer A did not merely commit a single act of personal dishonesty; he committed theft, accepted a sentence that included supervised probation as a condition of continued liberty, and then—while actively employed as an engineer and under that legal supervision—engaged in fraudulent check writing. This pattern reveals not an isolated lapse in character but a settled disposition of dishonesty that persisted across time, legal consequence, and professional context. The Board's ruling, while correct, understates the moral gravity of the aggravated sequence: each subsequent act of fraud during probation constituted a deliberate exploitation of the trust extended by both the legal system and his engineering employer. A more complete analysis would recognize that the ethical violation is not simply the sum of two criminal acts but is qualitatively worse because the second offense occurred precisely when Engineer A had the strongest institutional and moral incentive to demonstrate reformed character. The Board should have explicitly addressed whether this pattern of repeated dishonest conduct during professional employment warrants a more severe or categorically distinct disciplinary response than a single, isolated conviction.
The Board's conclusion that personal misconduct violates the Code leaves unresolved a critical threshold question: at what level of personal wrongdoing does Code jurisdiction attach? The Board's reasoning in Case 72-6 relies on the expansive interpretation canon and the public confidence foundational purpose of the Code, but it does not articulate a principled, administrable standard distinguishing minor personal failings from Code-triggering misconduct. Both Engineer A and Engineer B committed offenses involving deliberate dishonesty—theft, fraudulent checks, and fraudulent tax returns—which are paradigmatically incompatible with the honesty and integrity the Code demands as core professional virtues. However, the Board's reasoning, if extended without qualification, could theoretically sweep in minor traffic infractions, civil disputes, or misdemeanor conduct bearing no meaningful relationship to professional character. A more complete analysis would establish that the operative threshold is not merely criminal conviction per se, but criminal conviction for offenses whose essential element is dishonesty, fraud, or moral turpitude—a standard already recognized in analogous state engineering registration laws. This dishonesty-nexus criterion would provide a coherent limiting principle that honors both the expansive public-confidence purpose of the Code and the professional society disciplinary scope limitation cautioning against overreach into purely personal conduct. Without such a limiting principle, the Board's ruling risks creating an ambiguous zone of ungoverned minor personal wrongdoing on one end and unjustified overreach on the other.
The Board's treatment of Engineer B raises a distinct and underexamined analytical problem: the Board's reasoning appears to blend two independently sufficient but conceptually separate grounds for finding an ethics violation—the intrinsic character deficiency revealed by a dishonesty-based conviction, and the extrinsic reputational harm to the profession caused by the public identification of Engineer B as an engineer in newspaper accounts. These are not equivalent grounds and should not be conflated. The intrinsic character ground holds that any engineer convicted of a fraud-based offense violates the Code regardless of public exposure, because the Code's honesty and integrity provisions speak to the engineer's actual character, not merely to public perception. The extrinsic reputational ground holds that public identification of an engineer's criminal conduct creates a distinct harm to the profession's image that independently triggers Code obligations. If the Board's ruling rests primarily or exclusively on the reputational harm ground, it produces an arbitrary and troubling outcome: an engineer whose identical tax fraud conviction received no media coverage would escape Code jurisdiction, while Engineer B faces discipline largely because a reporter noted his profession. A principled and complete analysis must establish that the underlying conviction for a dishonesty-based offense is itself sufficient to trigger Code jurisdiction, with public professional identification serving only as an aggravating circumstance that heightens—but does not create—the ethical violation. Failure to make this distinction leaves the profession's ethical standards hostage to the contingency of media coverage rather than grounded in the intrinsic demands of professional character.
In response to Q101: Engineer A's failure to disclose his criminal conviction and probationary status to his new employer before accepting engineering employment constitutes a separate and independent ethics violation beyond the underlying criminal conduct itself. The NSPE Code's foundational commitment to honesty and integrity is not satisfied merely by refraining from further crime; it affirmatively demands transparency in professional dealings. Accepting employment while concealing adjudicated wrongdoing that directly bears on one's trustworthiness and legal standing is itself a deceptive act. The concealment exploits the employer's reasonable assumption that a new hire is free from serious legal encumbrances, and it deprives the employer of information material to the employment decision. Accordingly, even if Engineer A had not subsequently committed check fraud during probation, the silent acceptance of engineering employment while under supervised probation for theft would independently implicate the Code's honesty provisions. The subsequent fraudulent check writing then compounds this initial violation, transforming what might have been a single disclosure failure into a sustained pattern of deceptive professional conduct.
In response to Q102: The public identification of Engineer B as an engineer in newspaper accounts of his tax fraud conviction is properly understood as an aggravating circumstance that heightens the profession's reputational injury, but it is not a necessary predicate for Code jurisdiction. The underlying conviction for filing fraudulent tax returns is independently sufficient to trigger the NSPE Code's reach under the whole-person integrity standard articulated in Case 72-6. The Board's reasoning grounded in honesty as a core professional virtue does not depend on whether the public happened to learn of the engineer's professional identity; the character deficiency revealed by deliberate fraud is equally present whether or not a newspaper reported it. However, the public identification does create a distinct and additional harm: it concretely links the profession's reputation to the dishonest act in the minds of readers, converting a private character failure into a visible institutional embarrassment. The Board should therefore treat public professional identification as an aggravating factor that strengthens the case for disciplinary action and may inform the severity of the response, without treating its absence as a shield against Code jurisdiction. To do otherwise would produce the perverse outcome that engineers whose convictions attract media attention face discipline while equally dishonest engineers whose convictions go unreported do not.
In response to Q103: The Board's ruling in Case 72-6 does not establish a fully clear and administrable threshold for when personal misconduct triggers Code jurisdiction, and this doctrinal ambiguity carries real institutional costs. Both examples in Case 72-6 involve felony-level dishonesty offenses — theft in the first degree and fraudulent tax filing — so the ruling definitively covers serious felonies involving moral turpitude, particularly those rooted in deception. However, the Board's reasoning, which emphasizes honesty as a core professional virtue and the Code's purpose of sustaining public confidence, is broad enough in principle to reach misdemeanor dishonesty offenses, patterns of minor fraudulent conduct, or even serious non-dishonesty felonies such as violent crimes. The Board's caveat about professional societies exercising judiciousness in disciplining personal conduct acknowledges this ambiguity without resolving it. A more administrable standard would distinguish along at least three axes: first, whether the offense involves dishonesty, fraud, or breach of trust, which directly implicates the character traits the Code demands; second, whether the offense constitutes a felony or a pattern of repeated misconduct rather than an isolated minor infraction; and third, whether the conduct occurred in a context — such as employment or professional dealings — that creates a nexus to engineering practice even if not to engineering services. Case 72-6 establishes the outer boundary clearly for serious dishonesty felonies but leaves the interior of the zone ungoverned, inviting inconsistent application to lesser offenses.
In response to Q104: The aggravated nature of Engineer A's conduct — committing additional fraudulent acts during supervised probation while actively employed as an engineer — warrants a qualitatively more severe disciplinary response than a single isolated conviction, and the Board's failure to address proportionality of sanctions explicitly is a meaningful gap in the ruling. Engineer A's situation presents at least three compounding factors absent in Engineer B's case: first, the repetition of dishonest conduct demonstrating a settled disposition rather than a momentary lapse; second, the exploitation of a second chance granted by the criminal justice system, which transforms the probation period from a mitigating circumstance into an aggravating one; and third, the concurrent engineering employment, which means the fraudulent conduct occurred while Engineer A was actively representing himself as a trustworthy professional. A proportionality framework would recognize that Engineer B's single conviction, though serious, reflects a different and less severe pattern than Engineer A's escalating criminal career conducted in the shadow of professional employment. The Board's single conclusion that personal misconduct of the types described violates the Code treats both cases as equivalent, which may be appropriate for establishing jurisdiction but is insufficient for guiding the severity of disciplinary responses. Future Board guidance should articulate that repeated dishonesty during probation while employed as an engineer represents an aggravated category warranting the most serious available sanctions.
In response to Q201: The tension between the Professional Society Disciplinary Scope Limitation principle and the Ethics Code Expansive Interpretation Canon is real but resolvable through a structured two-stage analysis. The Scope Limitation principle correctly warns against professional societies becoming general arbiters of members' entire lives, which would be both overreaching and practically unworkable. The Expansive Interpretation Canon correctly rejects the opposite extreme — confining the Code only to conduct occurring during the delivery of engineering services — which would allow engineers to be serial fraudsters in their personal lives without professional consequence. The Board's resolution in Case 72-6 implicitly navigates this tension by anchoring jurisdiction in two limiting conditions: first, that the personal misconduct must have been adjudicated by legal authority, thereby avoiding the professional society substituting its own factual determinations for those of courts; and second, that the conduct must involve dishonesty, fraud, or similar character failures that directly contradict the virtues the Code identifies as constitutive of professional identity. This two-condition framework prevents overreach into genuinely private conduct — a traffic violation, a personal dispute, a lifestyle choice — while capturing conduct that reveals a character fundamentally incompatible with the trust the public must place in engineers. The Board should make this limiting framework explicit in future rulings to prevent the Expansive Interpretation Canon from swallowing the Scope Limitation caveat entirely.
In response to Q202: The Legal Authority Adjudication as Predicate principle does create a morally arbitrary distinction between engineers whose dishonest conduct has resulted in criminal conviction and those whose equally dishonest conduct has not yet attracted prosecution. Two engineers who engage in identical fraudulent schemes may face entirely different professional consequences based solely on prosecutorial discretion, investigative resources, or the willingness of victims to report. This arbitrariness is a genuine weakness in the Board's framework. However, the predicate requirement serves important institutional functions that justify retaining it as the primary trigger: it protects engineers from professional discipline based on unproven allegations, it avoids the professional society conducting its own quasi-criminal investigations, and it ensures a baseline of procedural fairness through the criminal justice process. The appropriate response to the arbitrariness concern is not to abandon the conviction predicate but to supplement it with a parallel track for cases where clear and convincing evidence of serious dishonesty exists independent of criminal proceedings — for example, civil fraud judgments, regulatory findings, or documented patterns of deception in professional dealings. Case 72-6 does not foreclose this supplemental track, and the Board should clarify in future rulings that criminal conviction is a sufficient but not necessarily exclusive predicate for Code jurisdiction over personal misconduct.
In response to Q203: The tension between grounding discipline in external reputational harm versus intrinsic character failure is genuine and risks producing inconsistent outcomes if left unresolved. If the Criminal Conviction Public Identification Reputational Harm principle is treated as a primary rather than aggravating rationale, then an engineer whose conviction is widely publicized faces discipline while an equally dishonest engineer whose conviction goes unreported does not — an outcome determined by media coverage rather than moral culpability. This would be both arbitrary and unjust. The more defensible reading of the Board's reasoning is that the Honesty as Core Professional Virtue principle is the primary and universal basis for jurisdiction, applicable to both Engineer A and Engineer B regardless of publicity, while the public identification of Engineer B functions as an aggravating circumstance that intensifies the profession's interest in responding visibly and promptly. Under this reading, the two principles are not in conflict but operate at different levels: one establishes jurisdiction and the other informs the urgency and visibility of the disciplinary response. The Board should make this hierarchy explicit to prevent future cases from being decided on the morally irrelevant basis of whether a local newspaper happened to identify the convicted engineer's profession.
In response to Q204: The Board's prolonged reservation of judgment in Cases 62-14 and 68-7 did create a doctrinal ambiguity that engineers might reasonably have interpreted as implied permission — or at least institutional tolerance — for personal misconduct outside engineering practice. Whether this ambiguity generated a cognizable reliance interest sufficient to raise fairness concerns about retroactive application of expanded jurisdiction is a more difficult question. In the context of criminal conduct, however, the reliance interest argument is substantially weakened: engineers cannot credibly claim they committed theft, check fraud, or tax fraud in reliance on the NSPE's prior silence about Code jurisdiction. The wrongfulness of these acts is established by criminal law entirely independently of professional ethics codes, and no reasonable engineer would commit fraud believing that the NSPE's doctrinal ambiguity provided professional cover. The more legitimate fairness concern is institutional rather than individual: the Board's decade-long failure to resolve the jurisdiction question may have deprived the profession of a deterrent signal that could have influenced conduct at the margins. This institutional failure does not, however, invalidate the Case 72-6 ruling or make its application to Engineer A and Engineer B unfair, since both engaged in conduct that was independently criminal and independently dishonest. The Board's obligation going forward is to maintain doctrinal clarity so that the profession is not again left in uncertainty about the Code's reach.
In response to Q301: From a deontological perspective, Engineer A failed his duty of honesty when he accepted engineering employment without disclosing his criminal conviction and probationary status. The categorical imperative demands that we act only on maxims we could universalize without contradiction. The maxim 'accept professional employment while concealing adjudicated criminal dishonesty' cannot be universalized: if all engineers followed this maxim, the trust that makes employment relationships possible would collapse, since employers could never rely on the implicit representation that a new hire is free from serious legal encumbrances. Engineer A's concealment therefore fails the universalizability test. Moreover, Kant's formula of humanity demands that we treat persons as ends in themselves, never merely as means. Engineer A's employer was treated as a means — a source of income and professional cover — rather than as an agent entitled to make an informed employment decision. The subsequent fraudulent check writing during probation compounds this deontological failure: it demonstrates that Engineer A's dishonesty was not a past aberration but an ongoing disposition, and it exploits the trust extended by both the criminal justice system and the engineering employer. The categorical imperative thus demands that personal integrity be treated as a universal professional obligation, and Engineer A's conduct violated this demand at multiple independent points.
In response to Q302: From a consequentialist perspective, extending the NSPE Code's disciplinary reach to personal criminal misconduct involving dishonesty is justified by the aggregate public benefits that outweigh the costs of professional society overreach. The primary consequentialist benefit is the protection and maintenance of public trust in the engineering profession, which is a precondition for engineers' ability to serve the public effectively. Engineers are entrusted with public safety, infrastructure, and complex technical decisions; this trust depends on the public's reasonable belief that engineers are honest actors. When engineers are publicly convicted of dishonesty-based crimes — particularly when their professional identity is linked to the conviction, as in Engineer B's case — the reputational damage extends beyond the individual to the profession as a whole, reducing the public's willingness to rely on engineering judgment and certification. The consequentialist case is further strengthened by the deterrent effect of professional discipline supplementing criminal sanctions: engineers who know that conviction for dishonesty offenses will cost them their professional standing face a stronger incentive to refrain from such conduct than criminal penalties alone provide. The costs of overreach — chilling minor personal conduct, burdening professional societies with investigative functions — are real but manageable if jurisdiction is limited to adjudicated criminal conduct involving dishonesty or moral turpitude, as the Board's framework implies. On balance, the consequentialist calculus supports the Board's expansive jurisdictional conclusion.
In response to Q303 and Q304: From a virtue ethics perspective, both Engineer A and Engineer B reveal settled dispositions of dishonesty that are fundamentally incompatible with the character traits the NSPE Code identifies as constitutive of professional engineering identity, though the evidence is stronger and more damning in Engineer A's case. Virtue ethics evaluates conduct not merely as isolated acts but as expressions of character — stable dispositions that define who a person is and how they reliably act across contexts. Engineer A's pattern is particularly revealing: the initial theft conviction demonstrates a willingness to take what is not his; the subsequent fraudulent check writing during supervised probation demonstrates that this willingness persists even under conditions of heightened legal scrutiny and after experiencing criminal consequences. This pattern is the behavioral signature of a settled dishonest disposition rather than a situational lapse. Engineer B's single conviction for filing fraudulent tax returns, while less patterned, nonetheless reveals a deliberate choice to deceive a public institution over time — tax fraud is not typically a momentary impulse but a sustained course of conduct requiring repeated affirmative misrepresentations. Both dispositions are irreconcilable with the virtues of honesty, integrity, and honor that the Code demands, because these virtues require consistency across contexts: an engineer who is honest in professional dealings but dishonest in personal financial matters does not possess the virtue of honesty — he merely performs honesty when professionally observed. The Code's whole-person integrity standard reflects this virtue-theoretic insight correctly.
In response to Q401: Even if Engineer A had voluntarily disclosed his theft conviction and probationary status to his new employer before accepting employment, such proactive transparency would have mitigated but almost certainly not negated the ethical violation arising from his subsequent fraudulent check writing during probation. The disclosure would have addressed the independent violation identified in Q101 — the deceptive acceptance of employment — and would have demonstrated a degree of honesty and self-awareness consistent with the Code's demands. It might also have been treated as a significant mitigating factor in any disciplinary proceeding. However, the subsequent commission of check fraud during probation while employed as an engineer constitutes an independent, aggravated, and self-standing ethics violation that no prior disclosure could retroactively cure. The fraudulent check writing reveals a continuing dishonest disposition that persists regardless of the employer's knowledge of the prior conviction. Indeed, one might argue that committing additional fraud after voluntarily disclosing a prior conviction would be even more damning from a character standpoint, since it would demonstrate that Engineer A's honesty in disclosure was strategic rather than reflective of genuine reform. The counterfactual therefore confirms that the core ethics violation in Engineer A's case is the pattern of dishonest conduct, not merely the failure to disclose.
In response to Q402: If newspaper accounts had not identified Engineer B as an engineer, the Board would likely have reached the same jurisdictional conclusion under the whole-person integrity standard articulated in Case 72-6, but the absence of public identification might have reduced the perceived urgency of the disciplinary response. The Board's reasoning in Case 72-6 is grounded primarily in the Code's honesty provisions and the character incompatibility between deliberate fraud and professional engineering identity — neither of which depends on media coverage. However, the Board's explicit reference to the newspaper accounts suggests that public professional identification played a role in the analysis, potentially as a triggering factor that brought the case to the NSPE's attention or as a rationale for asserting jurisdiction. If the Board's reasoning improperly conflates the aggravating circumstance of public identification with the threshold question of whether personal criminal misconduct independently violates the Code, it creates the problematic outcome noted in Q203: discipline becomes contingent on media coverage rather than moral culpability. The corrective is to treat the conviction itself as the jurisdictional trigger and public identification as an aggravating factor affecting the severity and urgency of response, not as a necessary element of the violation. This reading is consistent with the Board's broader reasoning in Case 72-6 and should be made explicit in future rulings.
In response to Q403: It is unlikely that definitive resolution of the personal misconduct jurisdiction question in Case 62-14 or Case 68-7 would have deterred Engineer A or Engineer B from their criminal conduct, since neither engineer appears to have been engaged in the kind of marginal cost-benefit calculation that professional ethics guidance typically influences. Theft, check fraud, and tax fraud are not acts that engineers commit because they are uncertain whether the NSPE Code reaches personal conduct; they are committed for financial gain or under financial pressure, with the primary deterrent being criminal law. However, the Board's prolonged doctrinal ambiguity does carry genuine institutional costs that constitute a form of ethical failure at the organizational level. By reserving judgment for over a decade, the NSPE failed to provide clear guidance to state registration boards, local ethics committees, and individual engineers about the profession's expectations regarding personal integrity. This ambiguity may have led to inconsistent disciplinary outcomes across jurisdictions, emboldened some engineers to treat personal dishonesty as beyond professional accountability, and deprived the profession of the norm-reinforcing function that clear ethical standards serve. The Board's obligation in Case 72-6 to resolve the previously reserved question is therefore not merely a matter of doctrinal tidiness but reflects a genuine institutional duty to provide timely, clear, and actionable ethical guidance — a duty whose prolonged breach itself warrants acknowledgment.
In response to Q404: The Board's conclusion would likely not have differed if Engineer A's fraudulent check writing had been directed against his engineering employer rather than third parties, nor if Engineer B's tax fraud had involved misrepresentation of engineering business income — but these variations do illuminate the moral architecture of the Board's whole-person integrity standard. If Engineer A's fraud had targeted his employer, the nexus to engineering practice would have been direct and the case for Code jurisdiction would have been even clearer, but the Board's reasoning in Case 72-6 explicitly rejects the requirement of such a nexus. The whole-person integrity standard holds that dishonesty is disqualifying regardless of its target, because the character deficiency it reveals is not context-specific. Similarly, if Engineer B's tax fraud had involved engineering income, the connection to professional practice would have been tighter, but the Board's analysis treats the fraud as disqualifying because of what it reveals about character, not because of its subject matter. These counterfactuals therefore confirm that the Board's standard is genuinely character-based rather than conduct-nexus-based: the moral relevance of the connection between criminal conduct and engineering practice is properly treated as zero for jurisdictional purposes, though it may remain relevant as an aggravating factor for sanctions. This is the correct approach under a virtue ethics framework, since character traits are by definition cross-contextual — an engineer who defrauds the IRS has the same dishonest character as one who defrauds a client.
The tension between the 'Professional Society Disciplinary Scope Limitation' principle—which cautions against professional societies overreaching into purely personal conduct—and the 'Ethics Code Expansive Interpretation Canon'—which rejects a narrow limitation of the Code to professional services only—was resolved in Case 72-6 by anchoring the expansive interpretation in two independent limiting conditions rather than eliminating the scope limitation entirely. The Board did not assert unlimited jurisdiction over all personal misconduct; instead, it conditioned Code jurisdiction on (1) prior legal adjudication of wrongdoing by a competent authority, and (2) a nexus between the character deficiency revealed by the misconduct and the core professional virtues of honesty, integrity, and honor that the Code explicitly names as constitutive of engineering identity. This dual-condition resolution preserves the scope limitation as a genuine constraint while permitting the expansive interpretation to operate within it. The practical effect is that the 'Legal Authority Adjudication as Predicate' principle functions as a gatekeeping mechanism that prevents the professional society from substituting its own factual judgment for that of the legal system, thereby respecting the scope limitation, while the 'Honesty Invoked as Core Professional Virtue' principle supplies the substantive bridge between personal criminal conduct and professional ethics obligations. Neither principle was abandoned; rather, the scope limitation was satisfied by the predicate-adjudication requirement, and the expansive interpretation was satisfied by the character-virtue nexus requirement. This synthesis produces a coherent but narrow expansion of Code jurisdiction that is defensible against overreach objections precisely because it is not self-executing—it requires both external legal validation and internal character relevance before discipline attaches.
The 'Criminal Conviction Public Identification Reputational Harm' principle applied to Engineer B and the 'Honesty Invoked as Core Professional Virtue' principle applied to both engineers are not fully reconcilable within the Board's reasoning, and this irreconcilability reveals a latent inconsistency in the case's doctrinal foundation. The Board's treatment of Engineer B's newspaper identification as an ethically relevant aggravating circumstance implies that reputational harm to the profession—an externally contingent fact dependent on media coverage—is a component of the ethical violation. However, the 'Whole-Person Character Integrity Standard' applied to both engineers grounds the violation in intrinsic character deficiency that exists independently of public exposure. If the character-based principle is primary, then Engineer B's violation is neither greater nor lesser than it would have been absent newspaper coverage, and the reputational harm principle is merely illustrative rather than constitutive of the violation. Conversely, if the reputational harm principle is independently operative, then an engineer whose identical criminal conviction was never publicly linked to his profession would face a lesser or potentially non-existent ethics violation under the same Code provisions—an outcome that is arbitrary from a moral standpoint and inconsistent with the Board's stated commitment to the 'whole-person' standard. The Board did not explicitly resolve this tension, and the failure to do so leaves open the question of whether public professional identification is a necessary condition, a sufficient aggravating condition, or merely a rhetorically convenient illustration of harm that the character-based standard already captures independently. The more principled resolution—consistent with the Board's own expansive interpretation canon—would treat reputational harm as illustrative only, with the character-integrity standard doing the primary normative work, thereby ensuring that disciplinary outcomes do not vary arbitrarily based on prosecutorial press releases or journalistic choices.
The 'Comparative Case Precedent Distinguishing Obligation' invoked for Cases 62-14 and 68-7 stands in productive but unacknowledged tension with the 'Personal Misconduct Ethics Code Jurisdiction' principles applied in Case 72-6, and this tension illuminates an important lesson about principle prioritization: the Board treated the 'Public Confidence as Ethics Code Foundational Purpose' principle as lexically superior to any reliance interest that engineers might have derived from the prior reserved-judgment decisions. By characterizing Cases 62-14 and 68-7 as instances of deliberate doctrinal reservation rather than implicit permission, the Board avoided the conclusion that prolonged ambiguity had created a legitimate expectation that personal misconduct was beyond Code reach. This prioritization is defensible on the ground that the Code's foundational purpose—protecting public confidence in engineering—cannot be held hostage to the profession's own institutional delay in resolving jurisdictional questions. However, the Board's reasoning implicitly acknowledges that the prior reserved-judgment decisions did create a 'previously reserved question' that required 'definitive resolution,' which concedes that the doctrinal state before Case 72-6 was genuinely ambiguous rather than clearly settled against jurisdiction. The lesson for principle prioritization is that foundational-purpose principles—those that articulate why the Code exists at all—will generally override procedural or reliance-based constraints when the two conflict, but this prioritization carries an institutional cost: it retroactively exposes engineers who acted during the period of ambiguity to discipline under a standard that was not clearly articulated at the time of their conduct. The Board's failure to address this fairness dimension explicitly represents an incomplete synthesis of the competing principles, and a more complete resolution would have acknowledged the retroactivity concern while explaining why the foundational-purpose principle nonetheless prevails.
Criminal Conviction Public Identification Reputational Harm Applied to Engineer B
Engineer B Criminally Convicted Practicing Engineer
Personal Privacy Right in Professional Self-Disclosure
Engineer B's public identification as an engineer in newspaper accounts of his tax fraud conviction creates a profession-implicating dimension to his personal criminal conduct, because the public association of engineering with fraudulent conduct harms the collective reputation and trustworthiness of the profession
When an engineer's criminal conviction is publicly reported with identification of the person as an engineer, the reputational harm extends to the profession as a whole; this public dimension transforms what might otherwise be purely personal conduct into a matter of professional ethics concern
Criminal Conviction Public Identification Reputational Harm to Profession Principle
Engineer B was charged with, tried and convicted of the offense of filing fraudulent income tax returns to the Internal Revenue Service. The newspaper accounts of the case noted that he was an engineer.
The public nature of the newspaper identification eliminates any privacy claim; the profession's legitimate interest in protecting its collective reputation justifies ethics code jurisdiction over publicly identified criminal conduct
Engineer B was charged with, tried and convicted of the offense of filing fraudulent income tax returns to the Internal Revenue Service.
The newspaper accounts of the case noted that he was an engineer.
Should the NSPE Board of Ethical Review assert Code of Ethics jurisdiction over Engineer A's and Engineer B's personal criminal misconduct involving dishonesty, or limit Code jurisdiction to conduct directly related to the performance of engineering services?
Whether personal criminal misconduct involving dishonesty — such as theft, fraudulent check-writing, or fraudulent tax returns — falls within the NSPE Code of Ethics jurisdiction, requiring the Board to resolve the previously reserved question from Cases 62-14 and 68-7 and affirm that such conduct violates the Code regardless of whether it occurred within engineering practice.
Affirm that the Code of Ethics reaches personal criminal misconduct involving dishonesty, fraud, or moral turpitude — regardless of nexus to engineering services — grounding jurisdiction in the Code's foundational public-confidence purpose and the whole-person character integrity standard, conditioned on prior legal adjudication.
Decline to assert Code jurisdiction over personal criminal conduct unrelated to the delivery of engineering services, treating the Code's honesty provisions as applicable only to professional dealings with clients, employers, and the public in an engineering capacity.
Limit Code jurisdiction to cases where the engineer's professional identity was publicly linked to the criminal conviction — as with Engineer B's newspaper coverage — treating public reputational harm to the profession as the necessary trigger for disciplinary reach beyond engineering services.
Should Engineer A have disclosed his criminal conviction and probationary status to his new engineering employer before accepting employment, or was he permitted to accept employment without such disclosure on the ground that no explicit Code provision required pre-employment criminal disclosure?
Whether Engineer A was obligated to disclose his criminal conviction for theft and his supervised probationary status to his new engineering employer before accepting employment, and whether silent acceptance of that employment constitutes an independent ethics violation beyond the underlying criminal conduct.
Proactively inform the prospective engineering employer of the theft conviction and supervised probationary status before accepting the employment offer, treating this information as material to the employer's hiring decision and required by the Code's affirmative honesty obligations.
Accept employment without volunteering the conviction, but answer truthfully and completely if the employer directly asks about criminal history or legal encumbrances — treating the Code's honesty obligation as prohibiting active misrepresentation rather than imposing an affirmative duty of unsolicited disclosure.
Refrain from accepting engineering employment during the probationary period entirely, recognizing that the combination of legal supervision and professional trust creates an irreconcilable conflict that cannot be resolved by disclosure alone, and that the most honest course is to defer professional employment until legal obligations are discharged.
Should Engineer B submit to professional disciplinary review upon his conviction for filing fraudulent income tax returns, treating the conviction itself as sufficient to trigger Code jurisdiction, or should Code jurisdiction be conditioned on the public identification of his engineering profession in connection with the conviction?
Whether Engineer B's conviction for filing fraudulent income tax returns — with his engineering identity publicly noted in newspaper accounts — triggers Code of Ethics obligations requiring submission to professional disciplinary review, and whether the public identification of his profession is a necessary predicate for jurisdiction or merely an aggravating circumstance.
Recognize that the conviction for filing fraudulent tax returns is itself sufficient to trigger Code jurisdiction and submit to professional disciplinary review, treating the public newspaper identification as an aggravating circumstance that heightens but does not create the ethical obligation.
Decline to submit to professional disciplinary review on the ground that the tax fraud conviction bears no nexus to engineering services rendered, arguing that the Code's honesty provisions apply to professional dealings rather than to personal financial conduct with government authorities.
Accept that the public identification of his engineering profession in newspaper accounts created a distinct reputational harm to the profession sufficient to trigger Code jurisdiction, while reserving the argument that an identical conviction never publicly linked to engineering would not independently violate the Code.
Should the NSPE Board of Ethical Review articulate an explicit dishonesty-nexus threshold criterion limiting Code jurisdiction over personal misconduct to convictions for offenses involving dishonesty, fraud, or moral turpitude, or should the Board issue a general ruling that personal misconduct violates the Code without specifying a limiting principle?
Whether the NSPE Board of Ethical Review should establish a principled, administrable threshold specifying that Code jurisdiction over personal misconduct attaches only to criminal convictions for offenses whose essential element is dishonesty, fraud, or moral turpitude — thereby reconciling the expansive interpretation canon with the professional society disciplinary scope limitation — or whether the Board's general ruling in Case 72-6 is sufficient without a limiting principle.
Articulate an explicit standard limiting Code jurisdiction over personal misconduct to criminal convictions for offenses whose essential element is dishonesty, fraud, or moral turpitude — consistent with state engineering registration law standards — thereby providing an administrable boundary that honors both the expansive public-confidence purpose and the judiciousness caveat.
Rule that personal misconduct of the types described violates the Code without articulating a specific limiting principle, leaving the precise threshold for future cases to be determined on a fact-specific basis as the Board's judiciousness caveat implies — trusting that the two present cases provide sufficient guidance by example.
Adopt a bright-line rule limiting Code jurisdiction over personal misconduct to felony convictions — regardless of whether the offense involves dishonesty — on the ground that the felony/misdemeanor distinction provides a clear, legally established threshold that avoids the professional society substituting its own moral gradations for those of the criminal law.
Should the NSPE Board of Ethical Review treat Engineer A's repeated criminal dishonesty during supervised probation while employed as an engineer as a qualitatively aggravated ethics violation warranting the most serious available disciplinary response, or should it apply the same jurisdictional conclusion as Engineer B's single conviction without distinguishing the severity of the pattern?
Whether Engineer A's pattern of repeated criminal dishonesty — committing fraudulent check-writing during supervised probation while actively employed as an engineer — warrants recognition as a qualitatively aggravated category of ethics violation distinct from a single isolated conviction, and whether the Board should address proportionality of disciplinary response explicitly.
Explicitly distinguish Engineer A's repeated criminal dishonesty during supervised probation while employed as an engineer as a qualitatively aggravated ethics violation — reflecting a settled dishonest disposition and exploitation of institutional trust — and recommend the most serious available disciplinary response to state registration boards.
Issue a single jurisdictional conclusion that personal misconduct of the types described violates the Code, treating Engineer A and Engineer B equivalently for purposes of the Board's advisory ruling and leaving proportionality of sanctions to state registration boards with actual disciplinary authority.
Acknowledge Engineer A's pattern of repeated dishonesty as an aggravating circumstance within the same jurisdictional framework applicable to Engineer B, noting that the pattern strengthens the case for discipline without creating a formally distinct category of violation — preserving doctrinal simplicity while signaling the heightened moral gravity.
Should the NSPE Board of Ethical Review treat criminal conviction as the exclusive predicate for Code jurisdiction over personal misconduct involving dishonesty, or should it recognize that equivalent evidence of dishonest character — such as civil fraud judgments or documented patterns of deception — may independently trigger Code obligations even absent criminal conviction?
Whether the NSPE Board of Ethical Review should resolve the tension between the Legal Authority Adjudication as Predicate principle — which grounds professional discipline in prior criminal conviction — and the Whole-Person Character Integrity Standard — which evaluates intrinsic character regardless of prosecutorial outcomes — by treating conviction as a sufficient but not exclusive predicate for Code jurisdiction over personal misconduct.
Affirm that criminal conviction is a sufficient predicate for Code jurisdiction over personal misconduct involving dishonesty, while clarifying that equivalent official determinations — civil fraud judgments, regulatory findings, or documented patterns of deception in professional dealings — may also serve as alternative predicates, ensuring that equally dishonest engineers are not arbitrarily exempted based on prosecutorial discretion.
Limit Code jurisdiction over personal misconduct to cases where a competent criminal court has entered a conviction, treating this as the exclusive predicate that protects engineers from professional discipline based on contested allegations and preserves the institutional division between criminal adjudication and professional oversight.
Adopt the whole-person character integrity standard as the primary jurisdictional basis, permitting the Board to assert Code jurisdiction over personal dishonesty whenever clear and convincing evidence of a settled dishonest disposition exists — regardless of whether criminal prosecution has occurred — on the ground that moral culpability does not depend on prosecutorial outcomes.
Dishonesty-Based Criminal Conviction Professional Incompatibility Applied to Engineer A Theft
Engineer A Criminally Convicted Practicing Engineer
Engineer A's conviction for theft in the first degree — a paradigmatic dishonesty-based offense — is categorically incompatible with the character requirements of professional engineering practice, because the willingness to take property belonging to others by deception directly contradicts the honesty and integrity obligations foundational to professional engineering
Theft in the first degree involves deliberate dishonest taking; this is precisely the type of character deficiency that the engineering ethics code's honesty and integrity provisions are designed to address, even when the conduct occurs outside of engineering practice
Dishonesty-Based Criminal Conviction Professional Incompatibility Principle
Engineer A was charged with the criminal offense of theft in the first degree and pleaded guilty.
The categorical nature of the incompatibility between dishonesty-based criminal conduct and professional engineering character obligations means that no balancing is required; such conduct falls squarely within the ethics code's character jurisdiction
Dishonesty-Based Criminal Conviction Professional Incompatibility Applied to Engineer B Tax Fraud
Engineer B's conviction for filing fraudulent income tax returns — an offense involving deliberate misrepresentation to a government authority — is categorically incompatible with the character requirements of professional engineering practice, because the willingness to make false representations to obtain financial benefit directly contradicts the honesty obligations of the engineering ethics code
Filing fraudulent tax returns requires deliberate, planned misrepresentation — the same character deficiency that would make an engineer untrustworthy in professional representations to clients, employers, and regulatory authorities; the offense is thus directly character-implicating for professional purposes
The deliberate, planned nature of tax fraud eliminates any claim that the conduct was inadvertent or situationally excusable; it reflects a character trait — willingness to deceive for personal gain — that is fundamentally incompatible with professional engineering obligations
Engineer A Adjudicated Wrongdoing Employment Disclosure
Engineer A accepted employment as an engineer during court-supervised probation for theft without disclosing the adjudicated conviction and probationary status to the employing firm.
Adjudicated Wrongdoing Employment Application Compelled Disclosure Constraint
Engineer A was constrained to disclose his adjudicated theft conviction and probationary status to the engineering firm that employed him during probation, as this adjudicated wrongdoing was material to the employer's assessment of his integrity and fitness for professional employment.
NSPE Code of Ethics Section III; BER Case 75-5; BER Case 03-6 (analogous precedent)
He was sentenced to a short jail term and five years of supervised probation
At the time of accepting employment during the probationary period
During his period of probation he was employed as an engineer by another firm
Engineer A Case 72-6 Criminal Conviction Employment Honest Disclosure Violation
Case 72-6: Engineer A pleaded guilty to theft in the first degree, was sentenced to jail and probation, and then was employed by an engineering firm during his probationary period — apparently without disclosing his criminal conviction and probationary status to his employer.
Criminal Conviction Employment Acceptance Honest Disclosure Obligation
Engineer A was obligated to honestly disclose his criminal conviction for theft in the first degree and his status as a court-supervised probationer when accepting engineering employment, and violated this obligation by accepting employment without apparent disclosure of his criminal history, thereby deceiving his employer who extended professional trust during a period of supervised rehabilitation.
Engineer A pleaded guilty to theft in the first degree, was sentenced to jail and probation, and then while employed as an engineer during probation committed further fraudulent acts.
At the time Engineer A accepted engineering employment during his probationary period
Engineer A Case 72-6 Profession Honor Dignity Personal Conduct Violation
Case 72-6: Engineer A pleaded guilty to theft in the first degree, was sentenced to jail and probation, and then while employed as an engineer during probation wrote and cashed fraudulent checks, violating the NSPE Code's preamble obligation to uphold the honor and dignity of the profession.
Profession Honor and Dignity Preservation Personal Conduct Obligation
Engineer A was obligated to uphold and advance the honor and dignity of the engineering profession through his personal conduct, and violated this obligation by pleading guilty to theft in the first degree and subsequently committing fraudulent check-writing during court-supervised probation while employed as an engineer — conduct that brought disrepute to the entire profession.
the preamble enjoins the engineer '. . . to uphold and advance the honor and dignity of the profession . . . .'
Throughout Engineer A's criminal conduct and probationary employment period
It would be incongruous if these kinds of moral imperatives were construed so as to ignore the type of personal behavior which is bound to bring disrepute to the entire profession for the acts of a few.
Engineer A Commits Probation Fraud → Probation Fraud Compounds Record
Engineer A Commits Theft → Engineer A Pleads Guilty
Engineer A Criminal Conviction Dishonesty Character Incompatibility Ethics Reporting
Engineer A pleaded guilty to theft in the first degree and was sentenced to jail and probation; the conviction involved dishonest conduct incompatible with engineering professional character standards.
Criminal Conviction Dishonesty Character Incompatibility Ethics Reporting Obligation
Engineer A was obligated to submit to professional disciplinary review upon his conviction for first-degree theft — a paradigmatic dishonesty-based offense — recognizing that such conviction is categorically incompatible with the character standards required of a licensed professional engineer.
Upon entry of guilty plea and conviction
He was sentenced to a short jail term and five years of supervised probation and to make restitution.
Engineer A Criminal Conviction Dishonesty Character Incompatibility Self-Recognition
Criminal Conviction Dishonesty Character Incompatibility Self-Recognition Capability
Engineer A was required to possess the capability to recognize that his theft conviction and subsequent fraudulent check-writing were inherently incompatible with the character requirements of professional engineering practice and triggered professional ethics obligations
Engineer A pleaded guilty to theft in the first degree, was sentenced to jail and probation, then committed further fraud while employed as an engineer — demonstrating failure to exercise this capability
Obligation to submit to professional disciplinary review and disclose conviction status upon pleading guilty to first-degree theft
while so employed he engaged in the writing and cashing of fraudulent checks
Engineer A Criminal Conviction Employment Acceptance Honest Disclosure
Engineer A, while under court-supervised probation for theft, was employed by an engineering firm; the case does not indicate he disclosed his criminal history and probationary status to his employer.
Engineer A was obligated to honestly disclose his theft conviction and probationary status to the engineering firm that employed him during his probation period, recognizing that accepting engineering employment without such disclosure constituted a deceptive act incompatible with the honesty standards required of professional engineers.
During his period of probation he was employed as an engineer by another firm and while so employed he engaged in the writing and cashing of fraudulent checks.
At the time of accepting engineering employment during the probationary period
Engineer A was charged with the criminal offense of theft in the first degree and pleaded guilty. He was sentenced to a short jail term and five years of supervised probation and to make restitution.
Engineer A Criminal Conviction Honest Employment Disclosure Execution
Criminal Conviction Honest Employment Disclosure Execution Capability
Engineer A was required to honestly disclose his theft conviction and probationary status to the engineering firm that employed him during his probation period
Engineer A was employed as an engineer by another firm during his five-year probation period, creating an obligation to disclose his conviction and probationary status to that employer
Obligation to proactively disclose criminal conviction and court-supervised probation status at the time of accepting engineering employment
{'criminal_charge': 'Theft in the first degree (guilty plea)', 'sentence': 'Short jail term, five years supervised probation, restitution', 'subsequent_offense': 'Writing and cashing fraudulent checks while employed as engineer on probation', 'professional_status': 'Employed as engineer during probationary period'}
Pleaded guilty to theft in the first degree, sentenced to jail and probation, then while employed as an engineer during probation committed further fraud by writing and cashing fraudulent checks — representing a pattern of criminal dishonesty while holding professional engineering status.
{'type': 'employee', 'target': 'Engineering Firm (unnamed, post-conviction employer)'}
{'type': 'subject_of', 'target': 'Criminal Court Probation Supervision'}
Criminally Convicted Practicing Engineer
Engineer A was charged with the criminal offense of theft in the first degree and pleaded guilty
During his period of probation he was employed as an engineer by another firm and while so employed he engaged in the writing and cashing of fraudulent checks
He was sentenced to a short jail term and five years of supervised probation and to make restitution
Engineer A Engineering Profession Image Non-Compromise Fraudulent Check Writing
Engineer A committed fraud while employed as an engineer during probation, directly associating engineering employment with criminal dishonest conduct.
Engineering Profession Image Non-Compromise Through Ethics Compliance Obligation
Engineer A was obligated to recognize that his fraudulent check-writing while employed as an engineer during probation — beyond its direct harm — caused grave damage to the image and interests of all engineers collectively, and that compliance with professional honesty standards was required not only for personal integrity but to preserve the public trust upon which the engineering profession depends.
During the period of probationary engineering employment
Engineer A Non-Association with Fraudulent Enterprise During Probation
Engineer A engaged in fraudulent check-writing while employed as an engineer during probation, constituting direct participation in dishonest enterprise while holding professional status.
Non-Association with Fraudulent Enterprise Constraint
Engineer A was prohibited from engaging in fraudulent conduct — specifically the writing and cashing of fraudulent checks — while employed as a professional engineer, as such conduct constitutes association with dishonest enterprise incompatible with the NSPE Code's prohibition on association with fraudulent activity.
NSPE Code of Ethics Section II.1.d; BER Case 75-5
Throughout professional employment as an engineer
Engineer A Personal Misconduct Ethics Code Jurisdiction
Engineer A pleaded guilty to first-degree theft, was placed on probation, and then committed additional fraud (fraudulent checks) while employed as an engineer during probation.
Engineer A's theft conviction and fraudulent check-writing during probation, though unrelated to engineering practice, fell within the jurisdiction of the NSPE Code of Ethics because personal misconduct reflecting on integrity and fitness for professional practice is subject to the Code.
NSPE Code of Ethics Sections I, III; BER Case 75-5; BER Case 62-14 (prior precedent)
From the time of conviction through the period of probationary employment
Engineer A Personal Misconduct Ethics Code Jurisdiction Recognition
Engineer A pleaded guilty to first-degree theft, was placed on probation, accepted engineering employment, and then committed further fraud by writing and cashing fraudulent checks during probation.
Personal Misconduct Ethics Code Jurisdiction Recognition Obligation
Engineer A was obligated to recognize that his theft conviction and subsequent fraudulent check-writing — though not directly related to engineering practice — fell within the jurisdiction of the professional ethics code because they reflected on his integrity, honesty, and fitness for professional practice.
From the time of the theft conviction through the period of probationary engineering employment
Engineer A Personal Misconduct Ethics Code Scope Self-Application Case 72-6
Personal Misconduct NSPE Ethics Code Scope Self-Application Capability
Engineer A was obligated to possess and exercise the capability to recognize that his theft conviction and subsequent fraudulent check-writing — though not directly related to engineering practice — fell within the scope of the NSPE Code of Ethics as personal misconduct reflecting on his character and fitness to practice.
NSPE BER Case 72-6 — Engineer A's failure to apply ethics code to personal criminal conduct
Failure to exercise this capability — Engineer A did not recognize or act on the ethics code's application to his personal criminal conduct.
We are therefore of the view, and are now prepared to state, that personal misconduct of the kind indicated in this case is subject to the Code of Ethics and may be dealt with accordingly under the code
Engineer A Personal Misconduct NSPE Ethics Code Scope Self-Application
Personal Misconduct Ethics Code Jurisdictional Boundary Recognition Capability
Engineer A was required to recognize that the NSPE Code of Ethics extended to his personal dishonesty-based criminal conduct — theft and fraudulent check-writing — even though these acts were not performed in a professional engineering capacity
Engineer A's theft conviction and subsequent fraudulent check-writing during probationary engineering employment implicated NSPE Code provisions extending to personal misconduct reflecting on character and integrity
Obligation to submit to professional disciplinary review and recognize that personal dishonesty triggers Code obligations
Engineer A Pleads Guilty → Engineer A Serves Jail Time
Engineer A Probationary Employment Aggravated Misconduct Ethics Escalation
Probationary Employment Aggravated Misconduct Ethics Escalation Capability
Engineer A was required to recognize that committing fraudulent check-writing while employed as an engineer during court-supervised probation constituted an aggravated ethics violation compounding his original theft conviction
Engineer A committed fraudulent check-writing while employed as an engineer during five years of court-supervised probation for first-degree theft — demonstrating failure to exercise this capability
Obligation to refrain from further dishonest acts during probationary engineering employment and to recognize the heightened ethical gravity of employment-context fraud during probation
Engineer A Probationary Employment Context Fraud Aggravated Ethics Violation
While under five years of court-supervised probation for theft, Engineer A was employed by an engineering firm and committed further fraud by writing and cashing fraudulent checks during that employment.
Probationary Employment Context Fraud Aggravated Ethics Violation Recognition Obligation
Engineer A was obligated to recognize that committing fraudulent check-writing while employed as an engineer during court-supervised probation for prior theft constituted an aggravated ethics violation — exploiting the professional trust extended by his employer during a period of supervised rehabilitation and compounding his original misconduct.
During the period of probationary engineering employment following the theft conviction
Engineer A Probationary Status Employed Engineer
{'probation_duration': 'Five years supervised probation', 'employer': 'Unnamed engineering firm (post-conviction)', 'further_misconduct': 'Writing and cashing fraudulent checks during probationary employment'}
While under five years of court-supervised probation for theft, Engineer A was employed by an engineering firm and exploited that employment context to commit further fraud (fraudulent checks), compounding both legal and professional ethical violations.
{'type': 'same_individual_as', 'target': 'Engineer A Criminally Convicted Practicing Engineer'}
Engineer A Probationary Status Employment Honest Disclosure
Engineer A accepted employment as an engineer during his court-supervised probation for theft without disclosing his probationary status to the employing firm.
Employer-Employee Trust Foundation Disclosure Timing Constraint
Engineer A was constrained to honestly disclose his theft conviction and probationary status to the engineering firm that employed him during his probation period, at the outset of the employment relationship, rather than concealing this material integrity-relevant information.
NSPE Code of Ethics Section III; BER Case 75-5
Engineer A Probationary Status Employment Honest Disclosure Constraint Instance
Engineer A accepted employment as an engineer during court-supervised probation for theft conviction without disclosing his probationary status, then committed additional fraudulent check-writing while employed
Probationary Status Employment Honest Disclosure Constraint
Engineer A was constrained to honestly disclose his theft conviction and court-supervised probationary status to the engineering firm that employed him during his probation, and was prohibited from concealing that status from his employer.
NSPE Code of Ethics §1 (highest standards of integrity), Preamble (honor and dignity); BER Case 72-6
Section 1—'The Engineer will be guided in all his professional relations by the highest standards of integrity, and will act in professional matters for each client or employer as a faithful agent or trustee.'
At the time of accepting employment with the engineering firm during probation
Engineer A Public Confidence in Profession Protection Through Personal Integrity
Public Confidence in Profession Protection Capability
Engineer A was required to recognize that his theft conviction and subsequent fraudulent check-writing undermined public confidence in the engineering profession and to act to protect that confidence by fulfilling his professional ethics obligations
Engineer A's criminal conduct — both the original theft and the subsequent fraudulent check-writing during engineering employment — undermined public confidence in the integrity of licensed engineers
Obligation to submit to disciplinary review and disclose conviction status, recognizing that personal dishonesty erodes public trust in engineering as a profession
Engineer A Repeated Criminal Conduct During Probation Aggravated Violation Constraint Instance
Engineer A committed fraudulent check-writing while employed as an engineer during court-supervised probation for first-degree theft, creating a pattern of repeated dishonest conduct during professional employment
Repeated Criminal Dishonesty During Professional Employment Aggravated Violation Constraint
Engineer A was subject to the constraint that committing additional fraudulent check-writing while already under court-supervised probation for theft and while employed as an engineer constituted an aggravated ethics violation more serious than either the original conviction or a single isolated act of misconduct.
NSPE Code of Ethics §1, §3, Preamble; BER Case 72-6
During Engineer A's period of court-supervised probation and engineering employment
Engineer A Repeated Criminal Conduct During Probation State
During the five-year supervised probation period, specifically when fraudulent checks were written and cashed
Repeated Criminal Conduct During Supervised Probation While Employed as Engineer State
Engineer A's commission of additional fraudulent acts during supervised probation while employed as an engineer
Engineer A wrote and cashed fraudulent checks while employed as an engineer during his probationary period following the theft conviction
Engineer A Repeated Criminal Dishonesty During Professional Employment Aggravated Violation
Engineer A, already on probation for first-degree theft, committed additional fraud through fraudulent check-writing while employed as an engineer, creating a pattern of repeated dishonest conduct during professional employment.
Engineer A was absolutely prohibited from committing additional acts of criminal dishonesty — specifically fraudulent check-writing — while under court-supervised probation and actively employed as a professional engineer, as such conduct constituted an aggravated ethics violation compounding the original conviction with a pattern of repeated dishonesty in a professional employment context.
NSPE Code of Ethics Sections I, III; BER Case 75-5
Throughout the period of court-supervised probation while employed as an engineer
Engineer A Serves Jail Time → Engineer A Begins Probation
Engineer A Theft Conviction and Probation State
From guilty plea and sentencing through the probationary period and beyond
Adjudicated Wrongdoing Disclosure Obligation State
Engineer A's criminal conviction for theft in the first degree
Not terminated within the case facts; persists through and beyond probation
Engineer A pleaded guilty to theft in the first degree and was sentenced to jail, probation, and restitution
Engineer A Whole-Person Integrity Scrutiny State
From initial theft conviction through subsequent fraudulent check-writing during probation
Whole-Person Integrity Standard Activation State
Engineer A's non-engineering criminal conduct and its ethical implications for professional standing
Criminal conviction for theft followed by additional fraudulent check-writing while employed as an engineer during probation
Engineer A's employment as engineer during Engineer A's probation period
Engineer A's fraudulent check writing and cashing during Engineer A's employment as engineer
Engineer A's fraudulent check writing and cashing during Engineer A's probation period
Engineer A's jail term before Engineer A's probation period
Engineer A's theft charge and guilty plea before Engineer A's jail term
Engineer B Case 72-6 Profession Honor Dignity Personal Conduct Violation
Case 72-6: Engineer B was convicted of filing fraudulent income tax returns and was publicly identified as an engineer in newspaper accounts, violating the NSPE Code's preamble obligation to uphold the honor and dignity of the profession.
Engineer B was obligated to uphold and advance the honor and dignity of the engineering profession through his personal conduct, and violated this obligation by filing fraudulent income tax returns and being publicly identified in newspaper accounts as an engineer in connection with that conviction — conduct that brought disrepute to the profession.
At the time of Engineer B's criminal conduct and public identification
It would be incongruous if these kinds of moral imperatives were construed so as to ignore the type of personal behavior which is bound to bring disrepute to the entire profession.
§ 1 of the code speaks to '. . . the highest standards of integrity . . .'
Engineer B Convicted Of Fraud → Engineer B's Identity Publicized
Engineer B Criminal Conviction Dishonesty Character Incompatibility Ethics Reporting
Engineer B was convicted of filing fraudulent income tax returns with the IRS; the offense involved deliberate dishonesty toward a government authority.
Engineer B was obligated to submit to professional disciplinary review upon his conviction for filing fraudulent income tax returns — an offense involving deliberate misrepresentation to a government authority — recognizing that such conviction is categorically incompatible with the honesty and integrity standards required of a licensed professional engineer.
Engineer B Criminal Conviction Dishonesty Character Incompatibility Self-Recognition
Engineer B was required to possess the capability to recognize that his conviction for filing fraudulent income tax returns was incompatible with the character requirements of professional engineering practice and triggered professional ethics obligations
Engineer B was convicted of filing fraudulent income tax returns and publicly identified as an engineer in newspaper accounts
Obligation to submit to professional disciplinary review upon conviction for tax fraud
{'criminal_charge': 'Filing fraudulent income tax returns to the IRS', 'conviction': 'Tried and convicted', 'public_identification': 'Identified as an engineer in newspaper accounts of the case', 'professional_status': 'Active engineer at time of conviction'}
Charged, tried, and convicted of filing fraudulent income tax returns with the IRS; publicly identified in newspaper accounts as an engineer, thereby associating the profession with criminal dishonesty and raising questions about fitness to practice.
{'type': 'publicly_identified_as', 'target': 'Engineer (in press coverage)'}
{'type': 'subject_of', 'target': 'Federal Criminal Prosecution (IRS fraud)'}
Engineer B was charged with, tried and convicted of the offense of filing fraudulent income tax returns to the Internal Revenue Service
The newspaper accounts of the case noted that he was an engineer
Engineer B Engineering Profession Image Non-Compromise Tax Fraud Public Identification
Engineer B's tax fraud conviction was publicly reported with identification of his engineering profession, associating engineering with tax fraud.
Engineer B was obligated to recognize that his public identification as an engineer in connection with his tax fraud conviction caused damage to the image and interests of all engineers collectively, and that compliance with professional honesty standards was required to preserve the public trust upon which the engineering profession depends.
At the time of the criminal conduct and its public reporting
Engineer B Files Fraudulent Returns → Engineer B Convicted Of Fraud
Engineer B Personal Misconduct Ethics Code Jurisdiction
Engineer B was convicted of filing fraudulent income tax returns, and newspaper accounts publicly identified him as an engineer.
Engineer B's conviction for filing fraudulent income tax returns, though unrelated to engineering practice, fell within the jurisdiction of the NSPE Code of Ethics because personal misconduct of this kind undermines public confidence in the profession's integrity.
Engineer B was charged with, tried and convicted of the offense of filing fraudulent income tax returns
From the time of conviction and public reporting
Engineer B Personal Misconduct Ethics Code Jurisdiction Recognition
Engineer B was convicted of filing fraudulent income tax returns; newspaper accounts publicly identified him as an engineer.
Engineer B was obligated to recognize that his conviction for filing fraudulent income tax returns — though not directly related to engineering practice — fell within the jurisdiction of the professional ethics code because it reflected on his integrity, honesty, and fitness for professional practice, particularly given his public identification as an engineer in newspaper accounts.
From the time of the tax fraud conviction and public identification
Engineer B Personal Misconduct Ethics Code Scope Self-Application Case 72-6
Engineer B was obligated to possess and exercise the capability to recognize that his tax fraud conviction — though not directly related to engineering practice — fell within the scope of the NSPE Code of Ethics as personal misconduct reflecting on his character and fitness to practice.
NSPE BER Case 72-6 — Engineer B's failure to apply ethics code to personal criminal conduct
Failure to exercise this capability — Engineer B did not recognize or act on the ethics code's application to his personal criminal conduct, particularly given his public identification as an engineer.
Engineer B Personal Misconduct NSPE Ethics Code Scope Self-Application
Engineer B was required to recognize that the NSPE Code of Ethics extended to his personal tax fraud conviction even though filing fraudulent tax returns is not an engineering-specific act
Engineer B's conviction for filing fraudulent income tax returns — a personal financial crime — implicated NSPE Code provisions extending to personal misconduct undermining public confidence in the profession
Obligation to recognize that personal dishonesty-based criminal conduct falls within NSPE Code jurisdiction and triggers professional ethics obligations
Engineer B Public Confidence in Profession Protection Through Personal Integrity
Engineer B was required to recognize that his tax fraud conviction — particularly as publicly reported with his engineering identity — undermined public confidence in the engineering profession and to act to protect that confidence
Engineer B's publicly reported tax fraud conviction, with his engineering identity noted in newspaper accounts, created a direct threat to public confidence in the engineering profession
Obligation to submit to disciplinary review and recognize that public identification as an engineer in criminal proceedings requires professional ethics response to protect profession-wide confidence
Engineer B Public Professional Identification Criminal Conduct Profession Reputational Duty
Newspaper accounts of Engineer B's tax fraud conviction publicly identified him as an engineer, associating the engineering profession with criminal dishonest conduct.
Public Professional Identification Criminal Conduct Profession Reputational Duty Obligation
Engineer B was obligated to recognize that his public identification as an engineer in newspaper accounts of his tax fraud conviction created a profession-implicating dimension to his personal misconduct, triggering professional disciplinary review and the duty to cooperate with that review to protect the engineering profession's collective reputation and public trust.
Upon public identification as an engineer in connection with the criminal conviction
Engineer B Public Professional Identification Reputational Harm Recognition
Public Professional Identification Reputational Harm Recognition Capability
Engineer B was required to recognize that his public identification as an engineer in newspaper accounts of his tax fraud conviction created a specific reputational harm to the engineering profession and triggered heightened professional ethics obligations
Newspaper accounts of Engineer B's tax fraud conviction specifically noted that he was an engineer, creating a public association between engineering and dishonest conduct
Obligation to recognize that media coverage linking his engineering identity to criminal conduct amplified his professional ethics obligations beyond those applicable to purely private misconduct
Engineer B Public Professional Identity Criminal Conduct Profession Reputational
Engineer B's conviction for filing fraudulent income tax returns was publicly reported with his engineering identity disclosed, causing reputational harm to the engineering profession regardless of the non-engineering nature of the offense.
Public Professional Identity Criminal Conduct Profession Reputational Constraint
Engineer B's public identification as an engineer in newspaper accounts of his tax fraud conviction independently activated the NSPE Code's honor and dignity provisions, constraining him from treating the absence of a direct nexus between tax fraud and engineering practice as a basis for concluding no professional ethics violation occurred.
NSPE Code of Ethics Preamble, Sections I, III; BER Case 75-5
From the time of public reporting of the criminal conviction
Engineer B Public Professional Identity Criminal Conduct Profession Reputational Constraint Instance
Engineer B was publicly identified as an engineer in newspaper accounts of his conviction for filing fraudulent income tax returns, creating a public linkage between engineering professional status and criminal dishonest conduct
Engineer B was subject to the constraint that his public identification as an engineer in newspaper accounts of his tax fraud conviction independently activated the Code's honor and dignity provisions, prohibiting him from treating the absence of a direct nexus between the tax fraud and engineering work as a basis for concluding that no professional ethics violation had occurred.
NSPE Code of Ethics §3, Preamble; BER Case 72-6
From the time of public identification as an engineer in connection with the criminal conviction
Engineer B Public Professional Identity Exposure State
From publication of newspaper accounts through the persistence of those public records
Public Professional Identity Exposure in Criminal Proceeding State
Engineer B's engineering identity publicly linked to his criminal conviction in newspaper accounts
Not terminated; public records persist indefinitely
Newspaper accounts of Engineer B's tax fraud conviction identified him as an engineer
From conviction through post-conviction period
Engineer B's criminal conviction for filing fraudulent income tax returns
Engineer B was tried and convicted of filing fraudulent income tax returns to the IRS
Engineer B Whole-Person Integrity Scrutiny State
Engineer B's non-engineering criminal conduct (tax fraud) and its ethical implications for professional standing
Criminal conviction for tax fraud, a non-engineering crime reflecting on personal honesty and integrity
Engineer B's Identity Publicized → NSPE Rules Personal Misconduct Covered
Engineer B's conviction before newspaper accounts of the case
Engineer B's filing of fraudulent tax returns before Engineer B's conviction
Engineer Personal Criminal Misconduct Code Jurisdiction Question
From the time of the engineer's criminal convictions through the NSPE Board of Ethical Review's definitive ruling in this case
Public relying on professional integrity
personal misconduct of the kind indicated in this case is subject to the Code of Ethics and may be dealt with accordingly under the code
Personal Misconduct Outside Engineering Practice Subject to Code Jurisdiction State
The engineer subject to NSPE ethics review for criminal conduct (check fraud, probation violations) unrelated to engineering practice
NSPE BER's definitive ruling that personal misconduct adjudicated by proper legal authority is subject to the Code of Ethics
Engineer's criminal convictions and probation violations, combined with the NSPE BER being directly confronted with the previously reserved question of whether personal misconduct outside engineering practice is subject to the Code
Engineer Whole-Person Integrity Standard Application
From the engineer's criminal convictions through the BER's ruling applying the whole-person integrity standard
§1 of the code speaks to '...the highest standards of integrity...'
The engineer whose criminal conduct outside engineering practice is evaluated under the NSPE Code's integrity and honor provisions
BER ruling applying the Code to the engineer's personal misconduct
It would be incongruous if these kinds of moral imperatives were construed so as to ignore the type of personal behavior which is bound to bring disrepute to the entire profession
the preamble enjoins the engineer '...to uphold and advance the honor and dignity of the profession...'
Engineer's criminal convictions and the NSPE Code's provisions requiring the highest standards of integrity and upholding the honor and dignity of the profession
Engineer in Case 62-14 Patent Office Disbarment
{'misconduct_type': 'Advertising to solicit patent business in violation of Patent Office rules', 'adjudicating_authority': 'United States Patent Office', 'code_section_implicated': 'Section 3 of NSPE Code of Ethics (formerly Canons of Ethics)', 'relation_to_practice': 'Related to engineering practice (patent work)'}
Engineer was disbarred by the United States Patent Office for advertising to solicit patent business in violation of Patent Office rules; NSPE held this violated the then-prevailing Canons of Ethics (now §3 of the Code of Ethics). Cited as precedent for the principle that professional code applies to conduct related to engineering practice.
{'type': 'precedent_for', 'target': 'Engineer Subject to Personal Misconduct Discipline'}
{'type': 'subject_of_discipline', 'target': 'NSPE Professional Society Disciplinary Authority'}
Personal Misconduct Disciplined Engineer
Engineer in Case 68-7 Intoxication Discharge
{'misconduct_type': 'Intoxication while in performance of engineering duties', 'adjudicating_authority': 'Employer (discharge); NSPE reserved broader question', 'code_section_implicated': 'NSPE Code of Ethics (question reserved at the time)', 'relation_to_practice': 'Occurred during performance of professional duties but characterized as personal misconduct'}
Engineer was discharged by his employer for intoxication while in the performance of his duties. Cited as precedent where NSPE reserved the question of whether personal misconduct separate from professional services would violate the code.
{'type': 'discharged_by', 'target': 'Engineering Employer'}
We do not deal in this case with the question of whether personal misconduct separate and apart from the performance of professional services would be a violation of the code
Ethics Code Expansive Interpretation Canon Invoked to Reject Narrow Professional Services Limitation
Scope determination for NSPE Code of Ethics in personal misconduct cases
Narrow textual interpretation of ethics code scope
The BER rejected the narrow argument that ethics codes apply only to conduct prejudicing professional services performance, applying an expansive interpretation that encompasses any conduct undermining public confidence in professional integrity — including personal criminal misconduct unrelated to engineering services
Ethics code provisions should be interpreted broadly to serve their foundational purpose of protecting public confidence, not narrowly to limit disciplinary jurisdiction to professional services conduct only
Ethics Code Expansive Interpretation Canon
But counter to this approach should be a recognition that the basic purpose of a code of ethics is to so regulate and direct the activities of professional practitioners that the public they serve may have confidence in their integrity, honesty and decorous behavior
Expansive interpretation prevails based on the foundational purpose of the ethics code
It may be argued that a code of ethics of any profession is only intended to relate to conduct which prejudices or may tend to prejudice the performance of professional services, and accordingly personal misconduct unrelated to such performance should be left to other proper authority
Honesty Invoked as Core Professional Virtue Violated by Criminal Misconduct
Engineer A guilty plea to theft in the first degree
Engineer B conviction for filing fraudulent income tax returns
The BER invoked the NSPE Code's requirement of the highest standards of integrity and honesty as a basis for holding that criminal convictions for dishonesty-based offenses (theft, fraudulent tax returns) are incompatible with professional ethics obligations, because such convictions demonstrate a character fundamentally at odds with the honesty the code demands
The honesty obligation in the NSPE Code is not limited to professional representations but reflects a character requirement that extends to personal conduct — criminal dishonesty violates this character requirement
No tension to resolve — criminal convictions for dishonesty are straightforwardly incompatible with the honesty principle
the basic purpose of a code of ethics is to so regulate and direct the activities of professional practitioners that the public they serve may have confidence in their integrity, honesty and decorous behavior
Honesty Professional Virtue Violated by Engineer A Fraudulent Check Writing
Engineer A's writing and cashing of fraudulent checks while employed as an engineer directly violates the professional virtue of honesty, which requires engineers to refrain from deliberate deception in all dealings, not merely those directly related to engineering services
The honesty obligation of the engineering ethics code is not limited to technical representations; it encompasses the engineer's character in all dealings, including financial transactions conducted through the employment relationship
Honesty is a foundational professional virtue that admits no exception for personal financial dealings; fraudulent check-writing is a direct and unambiguous violation
Honesty Professional Virtue Violated by Engineer B Tax Fraud
Engineer B's filing of fraudulent income tax returns directly violates the professional virtue of honesty, which requires engineers to make truthful representations in all dealings, including those with government authorities regarding personal financial obligations
The deliberate falsification of tax returns to misrepresent income to the IRS is a paradigmatic act of dishonesty; the engineering ethics code's honesty obligations extend to such personal financial misrepresentations because they reflect on the engineer's character as a whole
The deliberate nature of tax fraud eliminates any claim of inadvertence; it is a direct violation of the honesty virtue that the engineering ethics code requires of all members
Legal Authority Adjudication as Predicate Invoked for Engineer A and Engineer B Discipline
Professional Society Disciplinary Scope Limitation Principle
The NSPE BER grounded its disciplinary authority over Engineer A and Engineer B in the fact that their misconduct had been officially determined by proper legal authority — criminal courts — to be beyond the pale of socially sanctioned conduct; the professional society then took note of these official findings to protect the profession's good name
Criminal convictions by courts of law constitute the predicate official findings that authorize professional society disciplinary action on personal conduct; the professional society need not independently adjudicate the underlying conduct
State Engineering Registration Board Disciplinary Authority
Legal Authority Adjudication as Predicate for Professional Society Disciplinary Action Principle
when the conduct has been determined by proper legal authority to be beyond the pale of activity sanctioned by society the professional society may take note of such official findings and act accordingly to protect the good name of the profession
The requirement of prior legal adjudication both enables professional society action (by providing the predicate finding) and limits it (to officially adjudicated conduct only)
The state engineering registration laws similarly follow these precepts in authorizing the state registration board to discipline a registrant upon conviction for any felony or any crime involving moral turpitude
NSPE BER Case 72-6 Cross-Profession Code Analogy
Cross-Profession Ethics Code Scope Analogical Reasoning Capability
The NSPE BER demonstrated the capability to reason by analogy across professional codes of ethics, noting that the NSPE Code embraces language similar to that found in other professions' codes regarding integrity, honor, and dignity, and using this convergence to support the expansive interpretation of code scope.
NSPE BER Case 72-6 — cross-profession code analogy used to support purposive scope interpretation
Citing parallel language: 'the NSPE Code of Ethics embraces language similar to that found in the codes of other professions to the effect stated in §3.'
Likewise, §1 of the code speaks to '...the highest standards of integrity...' And the preamble enjoins the engineer '...to uphold and advance the honor and dignity of the profession...'
NSPE BER Case 72-6 Disciplinary Scope Restraint Caveat
Professional Society Personal Conduct Disciplinary Scope Restraint Capability
The NSPE BER demonstrated the capability to exercise judicious restraint in asserting disciplinary jurisdiction over personal conduct, explicitly cautioning that professional societies must not undertake to control purely personal habits or conduct of individuals.
NSPE BER Case 72-6 — disciplinary scope restraint caveat issued alongside the expansive jurisdiction ruling
Issuing the explicit caveat: 'professional societies with disciplinary authority must be careful and judicious in dealing with personal activity unrelated to professional services and must not undertake to control or decide purely personal habits or conduct or individuals.'
NSPE BER Case 72-6 Ethics Code Expansive Jurisdiction Personal Misconduct Resolution
Case 72-6: Engineer A convicted of theft and committed fraud during probation while employed as an engineer; Engineer B convicted of filing fraudulent income tax returns and publicly identified as an engineer. BER resolves the previously reserved question of whether personal misconduct falls under the ethics code.
The NSPE BER was obligated to recognize and definitively state that personal misconduct of the kind shown by Engineer A and Engineer B — criminal convictions for dishonesty-based offenses — falls within the jurisdiction of the NSPE Code of Ethics, rejecting the narrow argument that the code applies only to conduct prejudicing the performance of professional services.
Upon the BER's consideration of Case 72-6, which directly raised the previously reserved question
NSPE BER Case 72-6 Legal Adjudication Predicate Engineer A Theft Fraud
Case 72-6: Engineer A pleaded guilty to theft in the first degree and committed fraudulent check-writing during probation while employed as an engineer. The BER grounded its jurisdiction in these legally adjudicated facts.
Legal Adjudication Predicate Requirement for Professional Society Personal Misconduct Discipline Obligation
The NSPE BER was obligated to ground its disciplinary jurisdiction over Engineer A in the prior legal adjudication — guilty plea to theft in the first degree and subsequent criminal conduct during probation — rather than independently determining the wrongfulness of Engineer A's personal conduct, taking note of the official legal findings as the predicate for professional disciplinary action.
Upon BER's consideration of Engineer A's case
NSPE BER Case 72-6 Legal Adjudication Predicate Engineer B Tax Fraud
Case 72-6: Engineer B was charged, tried, and convicted of filing fraudulent income tax returns and was publicly identified in newspaper accounts as an engineer. The BER grounded its jurisdiction in the legal conviction.
The NSPE BER was obligated to ground its disciplinary jurisdiction over Engineer B in the prior legal adjudication — conviction for filing fraudulent income tax returns — rather than independently determining the wrongfulness of Engineer B's personal conduct, taking note of the official legal conviction as the predicate for professional disciplinary action.
Upon BER's consideration of Engineer B's case
NSPE BER Case 72-6 Legal Adjudication Predicate Grounding Engineer A
Legal Adjudication Predicate Disciplinary Jurisdiction Grounding Capability
The NSPE BER demonstrated the capability to ground its disciplinary jurisdiction over Engineer A in the prior legal adjudication — guilty plea to theft in the first degree — rather than independently adjudicating the underlying personal conduct.
NSPE BER Case 72-6 — Engineer A's guilty plea to theft used as legal predicate for professional disciplinary jurisdiction
Conditioning disciplinary action on the legal finding: 'when the conduct has been determined by proper legal authority to be beyond the pale of activity sanctioned by society the professional society may take note of such official findings and act accordingly.'
NSPE BER Case 72-6 Legal Adjudication Predicate Grounding Engineer B
The NSPE BER demonstrated the capability to ground its disciplinary jurisdiction over Engineer B in the prior legal adjudication — conviction for filing fraudulent income tax returns — rather than independently adjudicating the underlying personal conduct.
NSPE BER Case 72-6 — Engineer B's conviction for filing fraudulent tax returns used as legal predicate for professional disciplinary jurisdiction
Applying the same legal-predicate framework to Engineer B's tax fraud conviction as the basis for professional disciplinary jurisdiction.
NSPE BER Case 72-6 Prior Reserved Question Synthesis
BER Prior Case Reserved Question Identification and Synthesis Capability
The NSPE BER demonstrated the capability to identify and synthesize the pattern of reserved questions from Cases 62-14 and 68-7, quoting the precise reservation language from each, to frame Case 72-6 as the occasion for definitive resolution.
NSPE BER Case 72-6 — two prior reserved questions synthesized to frame the definitive ruling
Systematically citing Cases 62-14 and 68-7 with their precise reservation language before announcing the definitive ruling in Case 72-6.
In Case No. 62-14... we noted in that case: 'We do not consider at this time whether this application would hold if the violation pertained to conduct not related to engineering practice.'
Later, in Case No. 68-7... we noted that: 'We do not deal in this case with the question of whether personal misconduct separate and apart from the performance of professional services would be a violation of the code.'
NSPE BER Case 72-6 Professional Society Judiciousness Personal Conduct Discipline Caveat
Case 72-6: While affirming jurisdiction over personal misconduct, the BER expressly cautioned that professional societies must not overreach into purely personal matters, grounding the caveat in the distinction between legally adjudicated misconduct and mere personal lifestyle choices.
NSPE Board of Ethical Review and professional societies with disciplinary authority
Professional Society Personal Conduct Disciplinary Judiciousness Obligation
The NSPE BER was obligated to exercise — and to instruct other professional societies to exercise — careful and judicious restraint in disciplining personal conduct unrelated to professional services, limiting disciplinary action to conduct officially determined by legal authority to be beyond the pale of socially sanctioned activity, and refraining from attempting to control purely personal habits or conduct.
Ongoing obligation applicable whenever a professional society considers disciplinary action for personal conduct
NSPE BER Case 72-6 Public Confidence Ethics Code Foundational Purpose Invocation
Case 72-6: The BER grounded its jurisdictional holding in the foundational purpose of professional ethics codes — to regulate practitioners so the public may have confidence in their integrity, honesty, and decorous behavior — and invoked the profession's obligation to protect its good name.
The NSPE BER was obligated to apply the ethics code in a manner consistent with its foundational purpose of ensuring public confidence in the profession's integrity — and fulfilled this obligation by rejecting the narrow 'professional services only' interpretation and affirming jurisdiction over personal misconduct, thereby demonstrating that the profession recognizes its obligations to justify public confidence.
the basic purpose of a code of ethics is to so regulate and direct the activities of professional practitioners that the public they serve may have confidence in their integrity, honesty and decorous behavior.
NSPE BER Case 72-6 Purposive Scope Expansive Interpretation
Ethics Code Purposive Scope Expansive Interpretation Capability
The NSPE BER demonstrated the capability to interpret the scope of the Code of Ethics by reference to its foundational purpose — public confidence in professional integrity — rather than by a narrow textual reading limited to conduct during professional services.
NSPE BER Case 72-6 — purposive interpretation used to extend code jurisdiction to personal misconduct
Articulating the counter-argument to the narrow interpretation: 'the basic purpose of a code of ethics is to so regulate and direct the activities of professional practitioners that the public they serve may have confidence in their integrity, honesty and decorous behavior.'
It may be argued that a code of ethics of any profession is only intended to relate to conduct which prejudices or may tend to prejudice the performance of professional services
NSPE BER Case 72-6 Reserved Question Definitive Resolution
Reserved Jurisdictional Question Definitive Resolution Capability
The NSPE Board of Ethical Review demonstrated the capability to recognize that the question of personal misconduct jurisdiction had been reserved in Cases 62-14 and 68-7, and to definitively resolve it in Case 72-6 when squarely presented.
NSPE BER Case 72-6 — personal misconduct jurisdiction question definitively resolved after being reserved in Cases 62-14 and 68-7
Issuing the ruling 'We are therefore of the view, and are now prepared to state, that personal misconduct of the kind indicated in this case is subject to the Code of Ethics' after identifying the accumulated reservations from prior cases.
NSPE BER Case 72-6 Reserved Question Definitive Resolution Obligation Met
Case 72-6: The BER had reserved the personal misconduct jurisdiction question in Cases 62-14 and 68-7. Case 72-6 directly raised the issue, obligating the BER to resolve it definitively rather than reserving it again.
Reserved Jurisdiction Question Definitive Resolution Obligation
The NSPE BER was obligated to definitively resolve the previously twice-reserved question of whether personal misconduct unrelated to engineering practice falls within the ethics code, and fulfilled this obligation by issuing a clear holding that such misconduct is subject to the Code of Ethics.
In Case No. 62-14 . . . we noted in that case: 'We do not consider at this time whether this application would hold if the violation pertained to conduct not related to engineering practice.'
Upon the BER's consideration of Case 72-6
Later, in Case No. 68-7 . . . we similarly noted that: 'We do not deal in this case with the question of whether personal misconduct separate and apart from the performance of professional services would be a violation of the code.'
We are therefore of the view, and are now prepared to state, that personal misconduct of the kind indicated in this case is subject to the Code of Ethics.
NSPE BER Case 72-6 State Registration Law Analogue Recognition
State Engineering Registration Law Personal Misconduct Discipline Authority Recognition Capability
The NSPE BER demonstrated the capability to recognize and invoke the dual statutory bases of state registration board disciplinary authority — felony/moral turpitude conviction versus misconduct in practice — as legal analogue supporting the expansive interpretation of the ethics code's scope.
NSPE BER Case 72-6 — state registration law framework invoked to support ethics code expansive scope interpretation
Citing state registration law: 'The state engineering registration laws similarly follow these precepts in authorizing the state registration board to discipline a registrant upon conviction for any felony or any crime involving moral turpitude... intended to go beyond transgressions related to the practice of engineering.'
NSPE BER Previously Reserved Question Compelled Resolution
From Case No. 62-14 (first reservation) through Case No. 68-7 (second reservation) until the present case requiring definitive resolution
We do not consider at this time whether this application would hold if the violation pertained to conduct not related to engineering practice
Previously Reserved Ethical Question Definitively Resolved State
NSPE Board of Ethical Review's doctrinal position on personal misconduct outside engineering practice
NSPE BER's definitive ruling that personal misconduct adjudicated by legal authority is subject to the Code of Ethics
Present case directly raising the question previously reserved in Cases 62-14 and 68-7, making further deferral impossible
NSPE BER Previously Reserved Question Definitive Resolution Binding Precedent
The BER had previously reserved the question of personal misconduct jurisdiction in two prior cases and was now compelled to resolve it definitively given the facts of Engineer A and Engineer B.
Previously Reserved Ethics Question Definitive Resolution Binding Precedent Constraint
The NSPE Board of Ethical Review was constrained to definitively resolve the previously reserved question of whether personal criminal misconduct outside engineering practice falls within the Code's jurisdiction, having explicitly reserved that question in BER Cases 62-14 and 68-7, and to apply that definitive resolution as binding precedent going forward.
BER Cases 62-14, 68-7, 75-5; NSPE procedural ethics authority
From the issuance of BER Case 75-5 forward
National Society of Professional Engineers
NSPE Board of Ethical Review in analyzing both Example 1 and Example 2
Primary normative authority for determining whether personal criminal misconduct (theft, fraud, tax evasion) by a licensed engineer constitutes a violation of professional ethics obligations, even when the conduct is unrelated to direct engineering practice
NSPE Code of Ethics for Engineers – Preamble
the preamble enjoins the engineer'. . . to uphold and advance the honor and dignity of the profession . . . .'
Cited to establish the engineer's obligation to uphold and advance the honor and dignity of the profession, extending ethical obligations beyond purely technical practice
NSPE Code of Ethics for Engineers – Section 1
Cited to establish that the highest standards of integrity apply broadly to engineer conduct, supporting extension of code coverage to personal misconduct
Historical (formerly Section 1: 'The Engineer will be guided in all his professional relations by the highest standards of integrity...')
NSPE Code of Ethics for Engineers – Section 3
the engineer's action was a violation of the then-prevailing language of the Canons of Ethics, and which is now §3 of the Code of Ethics
Cited as the operative code provision governing personal misconduct that may discredit or dishonor the profession, including conduct unrelated to direct engineering practice
Historical (formerly Section 3: 'The Engineer will avoid all conduct or practice likely to discredit or unfavorably reflect upon the dignity or honor of the profession.')
NSPE Disciplinary Jurisdiction Over Engineer Criminal Misconduct
From the time NSPE became aware of the engineer's criminal convictions through the BER's ruling establishing jurisdiction
the professional society may take note of such official findings and act accordingly to protect the good name of the profession
Professional Society Disciplinary Jurisdiction Over Legally-Adjudicated Personal Misconduct State
NSPE's authority and obligation to exercise disciplinary jurisdiction over the engineer's criminal convictions
NSPE BER ruling confirming jurisdiction and authorizing disciplinary action under the Code
professional societies with disciplinary authority must be careful and judicious in dealing with personal activity unrelated to professional services
Engineer's criminal convictions adjudicated by proper legal authority, combined with the convictions' capacity to bring disrepute to the engineering profession
{'institution_type': 'Professional engineering society', 'jurisdiction': 'NSPE member engineers', 'authority_basis': 'NSPE Code of Ethics §1 and §3; preamble obligations of honor and dignity', 'scope_of_authority': 'Personal misconduct adjudicated by legal authority that reflects on professional honor'}
NSPE (through its Board of Ethical Review) exercises disciplinary authority over member engineers, including for personal misconduct unrelated to engineering practice, when such conduct has been adjudicated by proper legal authority and reflects upon the honor and dignity of the profession.
{'type': 'coordinates_with', 'target': 'State Registration Board Disciplinary Authority'}
{'type': 'disciplines', 'target': 'Personal Misconduct Disciplined Engineer'}
Professional Society Disciplinary Authority
NSPE Ethics Committee Disciplinary Authority Engineer A Jurisdiction Exercise
NSPE Board of Ethical Review considering whether personal criminal misconduct by Engineer A falls within the professional ethics code's jurisdiction.
The NSPE Board of Ethical Review was obligated to recognize that Engineer A's theft conviction and subsequent fraudulent check-writing during probationary engineering employment fell within the ethics code's jurisdiction, and to exercise disciplinary authority accordingly, not treating the Code as limited to purely technical engineering conduct.
Upon referral of Engineer A's case for ethics review
NSPE Ethics Committee Disciplinary Authority Engineer B Jurisdiction Exercise
NSPE Board of Ethical Review considering whether Engineer B's personal tax fraud conviction, with public identification as an engineer, falls within the professional ethics code's jurisdiction.
The NSPE Board of Ethical Review was obligated to recognize that Engineer B's tax fraud conviction — particularly given his public identification as an engineer — fell within the ethics code's jurisdiction, and to exercise disciplinary authority accordingly.
Upon referral of Engineer B's case for ethics review
NSPE Ethics Committee Disciplinary Jurisdiction Exercise Engineer A
Professional Society Criminal Conviction Disciplinary Jurisdiction Exercise Capability
The NSPE Board of Ethical Review was required to correctly identify and exercise disciplinary jurisdiction over Engineer A based on his theft conviction and subsequent fraudulent check-writing during probationary engineering employment
NSPE Board of Ethical Review exercised jurisdiction over Engineer A's personal criminal misconduct, applying Code provisions extending to personal conduct reflecting on character and professional integrity
Assertion of NSPE disciplinary authority over personal dishonesty-based criminal conduct not directly related to engineering practice
NSPE Ethics Committee Disciplinary Jurisdiction Exercise Engineer B
The NSPE Board of Ethical Review was required to correctly identify and exercise disciplinary jurisdiction over Engineer B based on his tax fraud conviction and public identification as an engineer
NSPE Board of Ethical Review exercised jurisdiction over Engineer B's personal tax fraud conviction, recognizing that public identification as an engineer in criminal proceedings amplified the profession-wide reputational harm
Assertion of NSPE disciplinary authority over personal tax fraud conviction, particularly given the public identification of Engineer B as an engineer in media accounts
NSPE Reserves Judgment 1962 → Prior Cases Create Precedent Gap
Personal Misconduct Ethics Code Jurisdiction Invoked Against Engineer A Theft and Probation Fraud
Engineer A's guilty plea to first-degree theft and subsequent fraudulent check-writing during probation while employed as an engineer falls within the jurisdiction of the professional ethics code, notwithstanding that these acts were not directly related to the performance of engineering services
The ethics code's jurisdiction extends to personal criminal conduct involving dishonesty because such conduct undermines the public trust that is foundational to professional engineering practice; the fact that the fraudulent checks were written while Engineer A was employed as an engineer further implicates the professional context
Personal Misconduct Ethics Code Jurisdiction Principle
Engineer A was charged with the criminal offense of theft in the first degree and pleaded guilty. He was sentenced to a short jail term and five years of supervised probation and to make restitution. During his period of probation he was employed as an engineer by another firm and while so employed he engaged in the writing and cashing of fraudulent checks.
The character-based nature of professional ethics obligations overrides any claim that personal criminal conduct is beyond the ethics code's reach, particularly where the conduct involves deliberate dishonesty
Personal Misconduct Ethics Code Jurisdiction Invoked Against Engineer B Tax Fraud Conviction
Engineer B's conviction for filing fraudulent income tax returns falls within the jurisdiction of the professional ethics code because it constitutes deliberate dishonesty that is incompatible with the character requirements of professional engineering practice, regardless of its lack of direct connection to engineering services
Tax fraud, while not an engineering act, involves deliberate misrepresentation to a government authority — a form of dishonesty that directly contradicts the honesty and integrity obligations of the engineering ethics code; public identification as an engineer in newspaper accounts amplifies the profession-implicating character of the conduct
The public identification of Engineer B as an engineer in connection with the conviction makes the conduct profession-implicating; the ethics code's character-based jurisdiction encompasses such publicly identified dishonest conduct
Personal Misconduct Ethics Code Jurisdiction Invoked in Case 72-6 Discussion
Engineer A criminal conviction for theft
Engineer B criminal conviction for fraudulent tax returns
The NSPE BER definitively resolved the previously reserved question from Cases 62-14 and 68-7, holding that personal misconduct of the kind shown in this case (criminal convictions for theft and fraudulent tax returns) is subject to the Code of Ethics and may be dealt with accordingly, because the code's purpose of maintaining public confidence in professional integrity extends beyond conduct directly related to engineering services
The previously reserved question — whether personal misconduct separate from professional services falls within ethics code jurisdiction — is now affirmatively answered: personal misconduct that brings disrepute to the profession is within the code's scope
The jurisdiction is affirmed but bounded: it applies to legally adjudicated misconduct, not purely personal habits; professional societies must be judicious
We are therefore of the view, and are now prepared to state, that personal misconduct of the kind indicated in this case is subject to the Code of Ethics and may be dealt with accordingly under the code in addition to whatever action may be appropriate by legal authorities
Professional engineering ethics community and NSPE Board of Ethical Review
Professional Norms on Personal Misconduct and Engineering Ethics
NSPE Board of Ethical Review in evaluating Engineer A (theft, fraudulent checks) and Engineer B (fraudulent tax returns)
Establishes that personal criminal misconduct — including theft, fraud, and tax evasion — by a licensed engineer falls within the scope of professional ethics obligations because such conduct undermines public confidence in the integrity and honesty of the profession, even when not directly related to engineering practice
Professional Norm: Personal Misconduct as Code of Ethics Violation
The Board articulates and adopts the standard that personal misconduct determined by proper legal authority to be beyond socially sanctioned behavior falls within the scope of the NSPE Code of Ethics, enabling professional societies to act to protect the profession's reputation
Prior Cases Create Precedent Gap → NSPE Rules Personal Misconduct Covered
Probationary Employment Exploitation Aggravated Misconduct Applied to Engineer A
Engineer A's commission of fraudulent check-writing while employed as an engineer during court-supervised probation for prior theft represents an aggravated form of professional ethics violation — the exploitation of professional employment to perpetuate a pattern of dishonest conduct while under judicial supervision demonstrates a character fundamentally incompatible with professional engineering practice
The combination of prior theft conviction, court-supervised probation, and subsequent fraudulent check-writing through exploitation of engineering employment creates an aggravated pattern of dishonest conduct; this pattern is more serious than a single isolated incident of personal misconduct and more directly implicates professional character obligations
Probationary Employment Exploitation Aggravated Misconduct Principle
He was sentenced to a short jail term and five years of supervised probation and to make restitution. During his period of probation he was employed as an engineer by another firm and while so employed he engaged in the writing and cashing of fraudulent checks.
The pattern of recidivist dishonest conduct during probation, exploiting professional employment, eliminates any mitigating factors that might otherwise counsel restraint in professional discipline; the aggravated nature of the misconduct warrants serious disciplinary response
Professional Accountability Applied to Engineer A Pattern of Criminal Conduct
Engineer A's pattern of criminal conduct — initial theft conviction followed by fraudulent check-writing during probation while employed as an engineer — triggers professional accountability obligations, requiring the profession to respond through disciplinary mechanisms to protect the public and the profession's integrity
Professional accountability requires that the engineering profession hold its members responsible for conduct that undermines public trust, including personal criminal conduct involving dishonesty; the pattern of recidivist behavior during probation amplifies the accountability obligation
The profession's accountability obligation to the public overrides any competing consideration of leniency toward the individual engineer; the pattern of conduct warrants formal disciplinary response
Professional Accountability Applied to Engineer B Public Criminal Identification
Engineer B's public identification as an engineer in connection with his tax fraud conviction triggers professional accountability obligations, because the public association of engineering with fraudulent conduct requires the profession to respond in order to maintain public trust
When an engineer is publicly identified in their professional capacity in connection with criminal conduct, the profession's accountability obligation to the public requires a formal response; silence in the face of publicly identified dishonest conduct by a member would itself undermine public confidence in the profession's self-regulatory capacity
The public nature of the identification eliminates privacy considerations; the profession's accountability obligation to maintain public trust requires formal disciplinary engagement
Professional Honor and Dignity Preservation Invoked as Normative Foundation in Case 72-6
Engineer B criminal conviction for fraudulent tax returns and public identification as engineer
Personal autonomy of individual engineers
The BER invoked the NSPE Code's preamble obligation to uphold and advance the honor and dignity of the profession, and §3's prohibition on conduct likely to discredit or unfavorably reflect upon the dignity or honor of the profession, as the normative foundation for extending ethics code jurisdiction to personal criminal misconduct that brings disrepute to the engineering profession
The honor and dignity provisions of the ethics code are not limited to professional conduct in engineering practice but extend to any personal conduct that brings disrepute to the profession as a whole
Professional Honor and Dignity Preservation Obligation
the preamble enjoins the engineer '. . . to uphold and advance the honor and dignity of the profession . . .'
The collective honor of the profession and the public's confidence in it outweigh the individual engineer's claim that personal criminal misconduct is beyond the code's reach
It would be incongruous if these kinds of moral imperatives were construed so as to ignore the type of personal behavior which is bound to bring disrepute to the entire profession for the acts of a few without any attempt to impose whatever corrective action is possible
Professional Society Disciplinary Scope Limitation Invoked as Caveat in Case 72-6
Scope of NSPE disciplinary authority over personal conduct of member engineers
While affirming jurisdiction over personal misconduct, the BER expressly cautioned that professional societies must be careful and judicious and must not undertake to control purely personal habits or conduct — the disciplinary reach extends only to conduct officially adjudicated by legal authority as beyond socially sanctioned activity
The affirmation of jurisdiction over personal misconduct is explicitly bounded: it does not authorize professional societies to regulate purely personal habits or lifestyle choices, only legally adjudicated misconduct
Jurisdiction is affirmed for legally adjudicated misconduct; purely personal habits remain outside disciplinary scope
professional societies with disciplinary authority must be careful and judicious in dealing with personal activity unrelated to professional services and must not undertake to control or decide purely personal habits or conduct or individuals
Public Confidence as Ethics Code Foundational Purpose Invoked to Resolve Jurisdiction Question
Engineer A and Engineer B disciplinary proceedings
Interpretation of NSPE Code scope in relation to personal criminal misconduct
Narrow textual interpretation limiting ethics codes to professional services conduct
The BER resolved the previously reserved jurisdiction question by appeal to the foundational purpose of professional ethics codes: to regulate practitioners so that the public may have confidence in their integrity, honesty, and decorous behavior — this purpose requires extending the code's reach to personal criminal misconduct, because a narrow interpretation limited to professional services conduct would allow conduct that destroys public confidence while claiming code compliance
The foundational purpose of the ethics code — public confidence in professional integrity — is the interpretive key that resolves ambiguity about the code's scope in favor of broader coverage of personal misconduct
Public Confidence in Professional Integrity as Ethics Code Foundational Purpose Principle
The purposivist interpretation prevails: the code's foundational purpose of maintaining public confidence requires extending jurisdiction to personal misconduct that undermines that confidence
Is personal misconduct of the types described a violation of the Code of Ethics?
Should Engineer A have been obligated to disclose his criminal conviction and probationary status to his new employer before accepting engineering employment, and does failure to do so constitute a separate, independent ethics violation beyond the underlying criminal conduct?
Does the fact that Engineer B's engineering identity was publicly linked to his criminal conviction in newspaper accounts create a heightened or distinct ethics violation compared to a conviction that was never publicly associated with his profession, or is the underlying conviction alone sufficient to trigger Code jurisdiction regardless of public exposure?
At what threshold of personal misconduct—misdemeanor, felony, moral turpitude, or pattern of conduct—should the NSPE Code of Ethics be triggered, and does the Board's ruling in Case 72-6 establish a clear, administrable standard or leave an ambiguous zone of minor personal wrongdoing ungoverned?
Does the aggravated nature of Engineer A's repeated criminal conduct during supervised probation while employed as an engineer warrant a qualitatively different or more severe disciplinary response than a single, isolated conviction, and should the Board have addressed proportionality of sanctions explicitly?
Does the 'Professional Society Disciplinary Scope Limitation' principle—which cautions against professional societies overreaching into purely personal conduct—conflict with the 'Ethics Code Expansive Interpretation Canon' that rejects a narrow limitation of the Code to professional services only, and how should the Board reconcile these competing principles to avoid both under-enforcement and overreach?
Does the 'Legal Authority Adjudication as Predicate' principle—which grounds professional discipline on prior criminal conviction—conflict with the 'Whole-Person Character Integrity Standard' in cases where an engineer's dishonest conduct has not yet resulted in criminal charges, potentially creating an arbitrary distinction between equally dishonest engineers based solely on prosecutorial discretion?
Does the 'Criminal Conviction Public Identification Reputational Harm' principle applied to Engineer B—which emphasizes the profession's reputational injury from public exposure—conflict with the 'Honesty Invoked as Core Professional Virtue' principle applied to both engineers, insofar as the former grounds discipline in external perception while the latter grounds it in intrinsic character, potentially producing inconsistent outcomes depending on media coverage rather than actual moral culpability?
Does the 'Comparative Case Precedent Distinguishing Obligation' invoked for Cases 62-14 and 68-7 conflict with the 'Personal Misconduct Ethics Code Jurisdiction' principles applied in Case 72-6, in that the Board's earlier decisions to reserve judgment may have created a legitimate reliance interest or implied permission for engineers to believe personal misconduct outside engineering practice was beyond Code reach—and if so, does retroactive application of the expanded jurisdiction raise fairness concerns?
From a deontological perspective, did Engineer A fulfill his duty of honesty and transparency when he accepted employment during probation without disclosing his prior criminal conviction for theft, and does the categorical imperative demand that engineers treat personal integrity as a universal professional obligation regardless of whether the misconduct occurred within engineering practice?
From a consequentialist perspective, does the public harm caused by an engineer's criminal convictions for dishonesty-based offenses — including erosion of public trust in the engineering profession and reputational damage amplified by newspaper identification — justify extending the NSPE Code's disciplinary reach beyond conduct directly related to engineering services?
From a virtue ethics perspective, does Engineer A's pattern of committing fraudulent acts — first theft, then fraudulent check writing during supervised probation while employed as an engineer — demonstrate a settled disposition of dishonesty that is fundamentally incompatible with the character traits of honesty, integrity, and honor that the NSPE Code identifies as constitutive of professional engineering identity?
From a virtue ethics perspective, does Engineer B's conviction for filing fraudulent tax returns — a deliberate act of deception directed at a public institution — reveal a character deficiency in honesty and civic integrity that is irreconcilable with the professional virtues the NSPE Code demands, even though the fraud was entirely unrelated to engineering services rendered to clients?
Would the NSPE Board of Ethical Review have reached the same conclusion regarding Engineer A if he had voluntarily disclosed his theft conviction and probationary status to his new employer before accepting employment, and would such proactive transparency have mitigated — or entirely negated — the ethical violation, given that the subsequent fraudulent check writing during probation constituted an independent and aggravated breach?
If the newspaper accounts of Engineer B's tax fraud conviction had not identified him as an engineer, would the NSPE Board of Ethical Review have been less inclined to assert disciplinary jurisdiction, and does the Board's reasoning in this case improperly conflate the aggravating circumstance of public professional identification with the underlying ethical question of whether personal criminal misconduct independently violates the Code?
If the NSPE Board of Ethical Review had definitively resolved the personal misconduct jurisdiction question in either Case 62-14 or Case 68-7 rather than reserving judgment, would the existence of binding precedent have deterred Engineer A and Engineer B from their criminal conduct, and does the Board's prolonged doctrinal ambiguity on this question itself constitute an institutional failure with ethical implications for the profession?
Would the Board's conclusion have differed if Engineer A's fraudulent check writing during probation had been directed against his engineering employer rather than third parties — and conversely, would the outcome have changed if Engineer B's tax fraud had involved misrepresentation of engineering business income — thereby testing whether the nexus between the criminal conduct and engineering practice is a morally relevant factor that the Board's expansive 'whole-person integrity' standard improperly dismisses?
State Engineering Registration Board Case 72-6 Felony Discipline Authority
State engineering registration boards possess the capability to recognize and exercise their statutory authority to discipline registrants upon conviction for any felony or crime involving moral turpitude, as a basis separate from and broader than misconduct in the practice of engineering.
NSPE BER Case 72-6 — state registration board authority recognized as broader than practice-related misconduct authority
Statutory authorization to discipline registrants upon conviction for any felony or any crime involving moral turpitude, including suspension or revocation of license.
This broad authority, including suspension or revocation of license, is intended to go beyond transgressions related to the practice of engineering
{'institution_type': 'State government regulatory board', 'jurisdiction': 'Licensed professional engineers within the state', 'authority_basis': 'State engineering registration laws', 'scope_of_authority': 'Felony conviction; crime involving moral turpitude; misconduct in practice of profession', 'sanctions_available': 'Reprimand, suspension, revocation of license'}
State engineering registration boards are authorized under state engineering registration laws to discipline registrants upon conviction for any felony or any crime involving moral turpitude, with broad authority including suspension or revocation of license — authority that extends beyond transgressions related to engineering practice.
{'type': 'coordinates_with', 'target': 'NSPE Ethics Committee Disciplinary Authority'}
state engineering registration laws similarly follow these precepts in authorizing the state registration board to discipline a registrant upon conviction for any felony or any crime involving moral turpitude
another part of the state board authority provides for reprimand, suspension or revocation of license for 'misconduct in the practice of his profession'
State Engineering Registration Board Disciplinary Jurisdiction Exercise
State engineering registration boards are required to exercise disciplinary jurisdiction over registered engineers convicted of felony offenses, including dishonesty-based crimes not directly related to engineering practice
State engineering registration boards possess statutory authority to discipline registrants for criminal convictions, providing a parallel disciplinary track alongside NSPE ethics proceedings
Statutory authority to discipline registrants upon conviction for any felony offense, applied to cases of theft, fraud, and tax evasion by licensed engineers
State Engineering Registration Laws – Disciplinary Authority for Felony and Moral Turpitude
Cited to demonstrate that state law independently authorizes registration boards to discipline engineers for any felony or crime involving moral turpitude, confirming that professional accountability extends beyond conduct directly related to engineering practice
State Registration Board Case 72-6 Felony Moral Turpitude Discipline Authority Recognition
Case 72-6: The BER invoked state engineering registration laws as parallel authority supporting the conclusion that personal misconduct falls within the disciplinary jurisdiction of professional bodies, noting that such laws authorize discipline for felony convictions and crimes of moral turpitude beyond engineering-practice misconduct.
State Engineering Registration Law Personal Misconduct Discipline Authority Recognition Obligation
State engineering registration boards are obligated to recognize and exercise their statutory authority to discipline registrants upon conviction for any felony or any crime involving moral turpitude — authority that extends beyond engineering-practice-related misconduct — and to apply this authority to engineers convicted of dishonesty-based offenses such as theft and tax fraud.
Upon conviction of a registrant for a felony or crime involving moral turpitude
This broad authority, including suspension or revocation of license, is intended to go beyond transgressions related to the practice of engineering.
Whole-Person Character Integrity Standard Applied to Engineer A Employment During Probation
At-Will Employment Symmetry and Engineer Mobility Right
Engineer A's acceptance of engineering employment during court-supervised probation for theft, without apparent disclosure of his criminal history to his new employer, and his subsequent exploitation of that employment to commit further fraudulent acts, represents a failure of the whole-person character integrity standard
An engineer seeking employment while on probation for a dishonesty-based criminal offense must disclose that history to prospective employers; the failure to do so, combined with the subsequent exploitation of the employment context to commit further fraud, demonstrates a character fundamentally incompatible with professional engineering obligations
Whole-Person Character Integrity Standard in Engineering Employment
The character-based obligations of professional engineering employment override any claim to privacy regarding criminal history that is directly relevant to the employer's assessment of the engineer's trustworthiness
reservation of judgment on personal misconduct (Case 62-14) before reservation of judgment on personal misconduct (Case 68-7)
reservation of judgment on personal misconduct (Case 68-7) before resolution of personal misconduct question (current case)