Abrogation of Fundamental Responsibility Through Employer Pressure Yielding
Company B engineers' potential compliance with employer instruction to proceed with production of machinery they believed unsafe
The Board implicitly held that Company B engineers who would have yielded to their employer's instruction to proceed with production — despite holding a sincere professional opinion that the design was unsafe — would have abrogated their most fundamental professional responsibility, because employment pressure does not override the paramount public safety obligation.
The principle applies to employment pressure as much as to political or public pressure; the engineer's safety judgment cannot be subordinated to any form of organizational or personal pressure when public health and safety are at stake.
Abrogation of Fundamental Engineering Responsibility Through Pressure Yielding
While such refusal to comply with the instruction of their employer may cause a most difficult situation, or even lead to the loss of employment, we must conclude that these considerations are subordinate to the requirements of the Code.
The Board held that these considerations are subordinate to the requirements of the code; yielding to them would constitute an abrogation of fundamental professional responsibility.
Adverse Technical Conclusion Malicious Intent Non-Presumption — Company B Engineers Safety Finding
Company B engineers reached a different technical conclusion from Company A's engineers regarding the safety adequacy of the machinery design — this honest disagreement did not constitute malicious disparagement.
Company A engineers and Company B officials
Adverse Technical Conclusion Malicious Intent Non-Presumption Constraint
Company B engineers' conclusion that Company A's plans and specifications contained miscalculations and technical deficiencies could not alone — without additional evidence of malicious or false intent — constitute a violation of anti-disparagement provisions; honest adverse technical findings were not presumptive violations.
NSPE Code of Ethics; BER precedent on adverse technical conclusions
the engineers of Company 'B' in reviewing the plans and specifications came to the conclusion that they included certain miscalculations and technical deficiencies
Throughout the period of inter-firm safety dispute
Company 'A' replied that its engineers felt that the design and specifications for the equipment were adequate and safe
Appropriate Authority Notification Post-Client-Safety-Override — Company B Engineers After Dual Dismissal
Company B engineers had exhausted internal and inter-firm escalation channels; both Company A and Company B officials dismissed the safety concerns; the public safety risk remained unaddressed.
Appropriate Authority Notification Post-Client-Safety-Override Mandatory Escalation Constraint
After Company A dismissed safety concerns and Company B officials overrode the engineers' professional judgment by ordering continuation of production, Company B engineers were constrained to notify the appropriate public authority of the safety concern — the dual dismissal did not discharge the engineers' escalation obligation.
NSPE Code of Ethics, Section II.2; Section II.1.c
After Company A's dismissal and Company B officials' override instruction
The officials of Company 'B' instructed its engineers to proceed with the work.
Appropriate Authority Notification Triggered for Company B Engineers
Unresolved safety concern after internal escalation and employer override
Having had their safety concerns dismissed by Company A and overridden by their own employer, Company B engineers retained an affirmative obligation to notify appropriate regulatory or governmental authorities of the life-safety endangerment posed by the deficient machinery design.
The professional responsibility to the public does not terminate upon client/employer rejection of the safety recommendation; external authority notification becomes obligatory when internal channels are exhausted without resolution.
Company B Engineers Safety-Discovering Manufacturing Reviewers
Appropriate Authority Notification When Professional Judgment Overruled on Safety
Public safety notification obligation to appropriate authorities supersedes employer loyalty and any implicit confidentiality in the inter-firm commercial relationship when life endangerment is at stake.
the equipment, if built according to the original plans and specifications, might endanger the lives of persons in proximity to it
NSPE Board of Ethical Review Case 61-10: Engineer Assigned to Redesign of Lower-Quality Commercial Product
In Case 61-10, we held that engineers assigned to the redesign of a commercial product of lower quality should not question the company's business decision, but had an obligation to point out any safety hazards in the new design.
In that case, however, the redesign of the product involved only a question of a lower quality product and did not raise the problem of the product endangering public health or safety.
Cited as analogical precedent distinguishing the present case: in Case 61-10, a lower-quality redesign did not raise public health/safety concerns, whereas the present case does; used to establish the boundary of when engineers must refuse vs. merely advise
NSPE Board of Ethical Review Case Precedents on Engineer Safety Obligations in Manufacturing Contexts
the final product might be unsuitable for the purposes of the ultimate users, and that the equipment, if built according to the original plans and specifications, might endanger the lives of persons in proximity to it
Ethics reviewers and engineers analyzing the obligations arising in this case
Prior BER case decisions providing analogical reasoning patterns for situations where engineers identify safety deficiencies in designs they are tasked to implement and face employer pressure to proceed
BER Case 61-10 Business Decision Safety Distinction Application Instance
Prior BER Case Business-Decision Safety-Hazard Factual Distinction Application Capability
The BER possessed the capability to retrieve Case 61-10's holding that engineers should not question a company's business decision but must point out safety hazards, and to correctly distinguish that case — where only product quality (not public safety) was at issue — from the current case where public health and safety endangerment was the central concern.
The BER analyzed whether Case 61-10's business-decision deference principle applied to Company B engineers' situation, correctly determining it did not because the prior case involved only quality (not safety) concerns
Explicit retrieval and application of Case 61-10, identification of its limiting factual condition (no public health or safety risk), and determination that the prior holding did not govern the current case where public safety was genuinely endangered
BER Ethics Code Spirit-and-Letter Dual Compliance Reasoning Instance
Ethics Code Spirit-and-Letter Dual Compliance Reasoning Capability
The BER possessed the capability to recognize that a literal reading of Section 2(c) — limited to signing, sealing, or completing plans — would technically permit Company B engineers to proceed with production, but that this literal reading violated the spirit and purpose of the provision, and to apply the purposive interpretation as the governing standard.
The BER analyzed whether the literal scope of Section 2(c) (sign/seal/complete plans) or its purposive scope (participate in any unsafe operations) governed Company B engineers' obligations, and applied the purposive interpretation
Explicit rejection of the literal construction of Section 2(c) as 'too narrow a reading,' articulation of the provision's underlying purpose (not to participate in any unsafe engineering operations), and application of that purposive interpretation to govern Company B engineers' obligations
But we think that this is too narrow a reading of the Code and that the purpose and force of Section 2(c) is that the engineer will not participate in any way in engineering operations which endanger the public health and safety.
BER Precedent Cross-Domain Analogical Application — Manufacturing Safety Context
The ethics board applied precedent from building safety and construction contexts to a manufacturing machinery safety dispute between a designing firm and an executing firm.
BER Precedent Cross-Domain Analogical Application Constraint
The ethics review board was constrained to acknowledge factual dissimilarities between prior BER precedent cases (developed in building/construction contexts) and the present manufacturing machinery case, while still recognizing that the same underlying Code provisions governed both — dissimilar facts did not nullify the bearing of precedent cases addressing the same Code provisions.
BER precedent methodology; NSPE Code of Ethics
Engineers of Company 'A' prepared plans and specifications for machinery to be used in a manufacturing process
During ethics board deliberation on the present case
BER Precedent Public Safety vs Non-Safety Factual Threshold Distinguishing — Case 61-10 vs Present Case
The ethics board needed to determine whether Case 61-10's precedent applied to the present case, where the safety stakes were materially higher — involving potential endangerment of lives rather than mere product quality concerns.
BER Precedent Public Safety vs Non-Safety Factual Threshold Distinguishing Constraint
The ethics review board was constrained to distinguish BER Case 61-10 (lower quality product redesign without public safety endangerment) from the present case (equipment that might endanger lives) — the public health and safety threshold was the operative factual distinction determining which precedent line governed.
BER Case 61-10; NSPE Code of Ethics; BER precedent distinguishing methodology
the final product might be unsuitable for the purposes of the ultimate users
BER Purposive Code Reading Non-Literal Participation Scope Determination
The BER explicitly rejected the literal reading as 'too narrow' and applied the purposive reading to extend the participation prohibition to executing engineers who are not the sealing engineers.
Ethics Code Spirit-and-Letter Dual Compliance Constraint
The BER was constrained to read Section 2(c) in the spirit of its purpose — prohibiting participation in any engineering operations endangering public health and safety — rather than exploiting the literal gap that Company B engineers were not asked to sign or seal plans.
NSPE Code of Ethics Section 2(c) (historical); BER interpretive principle
Business Decision Boundary Applied to Production Continuation Instruction
Company B employer's instruction to proceed with production despite engineers' unresolved safety concerns
The Board's analysis implicitly rejected the characterization of Company B's employer instruction to proceed with production as a legitimate 'business decision' insulated from ethical scrutiny, because the instruction directly implicated public health and safety — placing it within the domain of engineering ethics rather than management prerogative.
The employer's authority to direct production work does not extend to directing engineers to participate in operations the engineers believe endanger public safety; that decision crosses from business management into engineering ethics jurisdiction.
Business Decision Boundary Between Management Authority and Engineering Ethics Jurisdiction
In Case 61-10, we held that engineers assigned to the redesign of a commercial product of lower quality should not question the company's business decision, but had an obligation to point out any safety hazards in the new design. In that case, however, the redesign of the product involved only a question of a lower quality product and did not raise the problem of the product endangering public health or safety.
The Board held that the ethics code's requirements are not subordinated by employer business authority when public safety is at stake.
Business Decision Boundary Non-Extension to Public Safety Case 61-10 Distinction
The BER distinguished Case 61-10 (lower quality product redesign, no public safety issue) from the present case (machinery with miscalculations endangering persons in proximity), holding that the business decision deference principle does not extend to public safety endangerment decisions.
Engineers of Company B and BER Ethics Board
Business Decision Boundary Non-Extension to Public Safety Engineering Judgment Obligation
Company B engineers and the BER were obligated to recognize that the prior Case 61-10 holding — that engineers should not question a company's business decision to redesign a product at lower quality — did not apply to the present case, because the present case involved endangerment of public health and safety rather than merely a lower quality product, and that business decision deference ends where public safety endangerment begins.
In Case 61-10, we held that engineers assigned to the redesign of a commercial product of lower quality should not question the company's business decision, but had an obligation to point out any safety hazards in the new design. In that case, however, the redesign of the product involved only a question of a lower quality product and did not raise the problem of the product endangering public health or safety
At the point of determining whether the business decision deference principle applied
Business Pressure Technical Recommendation Separation — Company B Engineers Safety Finding
Company B engineers identified safety deficiencies in Company A's plans; business pressures from the production contract and employer instructions created pressure to subordinate technical judgment to commercial considerations.
Business Pressure Technical Recommendation Separation Constraint
Company B engineers were constrained to formulate and maintain their safety finding — that the plans and specifications contained miscalculations and technical deficiencies that might endanger lives — based solely on technical grounds, without subordinating that technical judgment to business pressures arising from the contractual relationship between Company A and Company B.
NSPE Code of Ethics; professional independence principles
Case 61-10 Business Decision Deference Non-Application to Public Safety Case
The BER explicitly distinguished Case 61-10 on the ground that it did not raise public health or safety concerns, establishing that the business-decision deference principle of Case 61-10 does not apply when public health and safety are at risk.
Case 61-10 Business Decision Non-Safety Public Health Distinguishability Constraint
The BER was constrained to distinguish Case 61-10 — which held that engineers should not question a company's business decision to redesign a product to lower quality — from the present case, because Case 61-10 involved only a lower quality product without public health or safety implications, whereas the present case involved potential endangerment of public health and safety.
Case 61-10 ruling before current case analysis
CausalLink_Employer Directive to Proceed
CausalLink_External Escalation to Company
CausalLink_Internal Safety Concern Report
CausalLink_Machinery Design Finalization
CausalLink_Plans Transfer to Manufacturer
CausalLink_Referral to Impartial Expert B
CausalLink_Refusal to Proceed with Produc
CausalLink_Safety Concern Dismissal Decis
CausalLink_Safety Deficiency Identificati
Client Loyalty vs. Public Safety Priority — Company B Engineers Competing Duties
Company B engineers faced a direct conflict between their employer's instruction to proceed with production and their professional judgment that the equipment might endanger lives.
Client Loyalty vs. Public Safety Priority Constraint
Company B engineers were constrained by the priority rule that their paramount obligation to public safety superseded their duty of loyalty to their employer (Company B) — when the two obligations conflicted, public safety took precedence.
NSPE Code of Ethics, Section II.1 (public safety paramount); Section III.1 (faithful agent)
Throughout the period of competing duties between employer loyalty and public safety
Company A Engineers Collegial Concern Response
Company A engineers were required to receive and respond to the safety concerns raised by Company B engineers with professional respect and genuine investigative commitment — recognizing that collegial obligations required taking such concerns seriously regardless of the fact that they originated from the production firm reviewing their own design work
Triggered when Company B officials relayed Company B engineers' safety concerns about miscalculations in Company A's plans and specifications
Company A engineers' failure to respond with genuine investigative commitment, instead dismissing the concerns with a self-serving assurance of adequacy
Company A Engineers (Deficient Machinery Designers / Safety-Concern-Dismissing Design Authority)
Company 'A' replied that its engineers felt that the design and specifications for the equipment were adequate and safe and that Company 'B' should proceed to build the equipment as designed and specified.
The engineers of Company 'B' called the matter to the attention of appropriate officials of their employer who, in turn, advised Company 'A' of the concern expressed by the engineers of Company 'B'.
Company A Engineers Deficient Machinery Designers
{'employer': 'Company A', 'function': 'Original design and specification of machinery', 'response_to_safety_concern': 'Dismissed — asserted design was adequate and safe'}
Prepared plans and specifications for machinery to be used in a manufacturing process; those plans contained miscalculations and technical deficiencies rendering the equipment potentially unsafe; dismissed Company B engineers' safety concerns and asserted the design was adequate.
{'type': 'employed_by', 'target': 'Company A Officials Safety-Concern-Dismissing Authority'}
{'type': 'peer_review_subject', 'target': 'Company B Engineers Safety Reviewers'}
Engineers of Company 'A' prepared plans and specifications for machinery
Company A Engineers Design Miscalculation Objective Review Upon External Notification
Design Miscalculation Objective Review Upon External Notification Capability
Company A engineers were required to conduct a genuine, objective review of the miscalculations and technical deficiencies identified by Company B engineers — rather than reflexively asserting that their own design was adequate and safe — and to correct confirmed deficiencies before production proceeded
Triggered when Company B officials advised Company A of the safety concerns raised by Company B engineers regarding miscalculations in Company A's plans and specifications
Company A engineers' failure to conduct a genuine objective review, instead issuing a self-serving assurance that their design was adequate and directing Company B to proceed
Company A Engineers (Deficient Machinery Designers)
The engineers of Company 'B' in reviewing the plans and specifications came to the conclusion that they included certain miscalculations and technical deficiencies
Company A Engineers Dismissing Safety Concerns
{'employer': 'Company A (design firm)', 'design_action': 'Prepared, signed, and sealed original plans and specifications', 'response_to_safety_concerns': "Dismissed Company B engineers' objections; asserted design adequacy"}
Engineers of Company A prepared the original plans and specifications, signed and sealed them, and upon receiving safety objections from Company B's engineers, dismissed those concerns and asserted the adequacy of their original design — creating the inter-firm safety impasse that necessitates referral to an impartial body.
{'type': 'peer_dispute', 'target': 'Company B Engineers Refusing Unsafe Production'}
{'type': 'referral_to', 'target': 'Impartial Safety Dispute Arbitration Body'}
Safety-Concern-Dismissing Design Authority
This has been done by the engineers of Company 'A'
there is an apparent honest difference of opinion as to the safety features of the machinery between the engineers of Company 'A' and the engineers of Company 'B'
Company A Engineers Honest Disagreement Non-Ethical-Violation Recognition
The BER characterized the disagreement between Company A and Company B engineers as an 'apparent honest difference of opinion' rather than treating Company A's position as inherently unethical, while still holding that Company B engineers were required to refuse production participation.
Honest Technical Disagreement Non-Ethical-Violation Recognition Obligation
The BER was obligated to recognize that the disagreement between Company A engineers (asserting design adequacy) and Company B engineers (identifying miscalculations) constituted an apparent honest difference of opinion among qualified engineers, and that neither position was inherently unethical — the ethical question turning on whether each party acted with integrity and fulfilled their respective professional obligations.
Where, as in this case, there is an apparent honest difference of opinion as to the safety features of the machinery between the engineers of Company 'A' and the engineers of Company 'B'
Company A Engineers Honest Disagreement Non-Ethical-Violation Recognition Instance
Honest Technical Disagreement Between Qualified Engineers Non-Ethical-Violation Recognition Capability
The BER possessed the capability to recognize that the disagreement between Company A engineers (asserting design adequacy) and Company B engineers (identifying safety deficiencies) constituted an honest technical disagreement rather than an ethical violation by either party, and to recommend referral to an impartial body rather than assigning ethical fault to either engineering team.
The BER analyzed the safety dispute between Company A and Company B engineers and characterized it as an honest technical disagreement, recommending impartial arbitration rather than assigning ethical fault
Recognition that the safety dispute between Company A and Company B engineers was an 'apparent honest difference of opinion' warranting referral to an impartial body of experts rather than ethical condemnation of either party
Where, as in this case, there is an apparent honest difference of opinion as to the safety features of the machinery between the engineers of Company 'A' and the engineers of Company 'B' it would be appropriate for the question to be referred to an impartial body of experts, such as a technical engineering society in the particular field of practice, for an independent determination.
Company A Engineers Objective Review of External Safety Notification
Company A engineers prepared plans and specifications containing miscalculations and technical deficiencies; upon receiving Company B's notification, they dismissed the concerns with a self-serving assurance of adequacy rather than conducting an objective review.
Design Firm Miscalculation Correction Upon External Notification Obligation
Company A engineers were obligated to conduct a genuine, objective review of the miscalculations and technical deficiencies identified by Company B engineers rather than dismissing those concerns on the basis of their own prior assessment, and to correct identified deficiencies before authorizing production to proceed.
Upon receipt of Company B officials' notification of safety concerns raised by Company B engineers
The engineers of Company 'B' in reviewing the plans and specifications came to the conclusion that they included certain miscalculations and technical deficiencies of a nature that the final product might be unsuitable for the purposes of the ultimate users.
Company A Officials Safety-Concern-Dismissing Authority
{'employer': 'Company A', 'function': 'Organizational authority over design decisions and inter-company communications', 'response_to_safety_concern': 'Dismissed — instructed Company B to proceed'}
Received notification from Company B officials of safety concerns raised by Company B engineers; dismissed those concerns; directed Company B to proceed with building the equipment as designed.
{'type': 'counterpart', 'target': 'Company B Officials Safety-Overriding Production Authority'}
{'type': 'employs', 'target': 'Company A Engineers Deficient Machinery Designers'}
Company 'A' replied that its engineers felt that the design and specifications for the equipment were adequate and safe and that Company 'B' should proceed to build the equipment as designed and specified
Company A dismissing concerns before Company B officials instructing engineers to proceed
Company A plan and specification preparation before Company B review of plans and specifications
Company A plan preparation before Company B production
Company B Employer Instructing Production Continuation
{'firm_type': 'Production/manufacturing firm', 'instruction_given': 'Proceed with production under original plans and specifications', 'conflict_generated': 'Engineer obligation to refuse vs. employer instruction to comply'}
Company B as employer instructs its engineers to proceed with production despite their unresolved safety concerns, creating the ethical conflict between employer loyalty and the engineers' paramount public safety obligations under Section 2(c).
{'type': 'contracts_with', 'target': 'Company A Engineers Dismissing Safety Concerns'}
{'type': 'employs', 'target': 'Company B Engineers Refusing Unsafe Production'}
such refusal to comply with the instruction of their employer may cause a most difficult situation, or even lead to the loss of employment
these considerations are subordinate to the requirements of the Code
Company B Engineers Appropriate Authority Notification After Override
After both Company A and Company B officials failed to resolve the safety concern, Company B engineers retained an affirmative obligation to escalate to appropriate public authorities to protect persons who would be in proximity to the deficient equipment.
Appropriate Authority Notification After Professional Judgment Safety Override Obligation
Company B engineers, having had their safety concerns dismissed by Company A and overridden by their own employer, were obligated to notify the appropriate public authority of the life-endangering deficiencies in Company A's plans and specifications.
After Company B officials' instruction to proceed and upon determination that internal escalation was exhausted
the equipment, if built according to the original plans and specifications, might endanger the lives of persons in proximity to it.
Company B Engineers Appropriate Authority Notification Obligation
Section 2(c) required engineers to notify proper authority of dangers they believed to exist when a client or employer insisted on proceeding with unsafe plans. Company B engineers retained this notification obligation after their concerns were dismissed.
Company B engineers were obligated to notify the proper authority of the dangers they believed to exist in Company A's plans and specifications, after their safety concerns were dismissed by Company A and overridden by their own employer.
The last sentence of Section 2(c) is likewise clear in requiring that the engineers not only notify proper authority of the dangers which they believe to exist, but that they also 'withdraw from further service on the project.'
Upon dismissal of safety concerns by Company A and employer instruction to proceed
Company B Engineers Client Insistence or Project Withdrawal Safety Enforcement
Client Insistence or Project Withdrawal Safety Enforcement Capability
Company B engineers were required to either insist that production not proceed with the deficient plans and specifications, or withdraw from the project entirely, rather than going along without dissent after their employer's override
Required response after Company B officials instructed engineers to proceed with production of potentially life-endangering equipment
The ethical obligation to insist on corrective action or withdraw when the employer instructs continuation despite identified life-safety risks
Company B Engineers (Safety-Discovering Manufacturing Review Engineers)
Company B Engineers Competing Duties: Employer Loyalty vs. Public Safety
From the moment Company B officials instructed engineers to proceed, persisting until the engineers make a decision
officials of Company B instructed its engineers to proceed with the work
Company B engineers' professional obligation structure after receiving instruction to proceed
Engineer's decision to comply, refuse, or disassociate
equipment, if built according to the original plans and specifications, might endanger the lives of persons in proximity to it
Collision between the duty to follow employer instructions (faithful agent obligation) and the paramount duty to protect public safety from identified design deficiencies
Company B Engineers Competing Duties — Employment vs. Public Safety Withdrawal
From employer instruction to proceed with production through ethics board determination that code obligations are paramount
the further and more difficult question, however, is whether the engineers of Company 'B' are required or ethically permitted to refuse to proceed with the production on the basis of plans and specifications which they continue to regard as unsafe
The competing obligations faced by Company B engineers between their duty of employment compliance (proceeding with production as instructed) and their mandatory code duty to refuse participation in and withdraw from engineering operations endangering public health and safety
Ethics board's determination that public safety code obligations are subordinate to no other consideration, including employment
While such refusal to comply with the instruction of their employer may cause a most difficult situation, or even lead to the loss of employment, we must conclude that these considerations are subordinate to the requirements of the Code
Employer instruction to proceed with production of machinery design that engineers believe is unsafe, creating direct conflict between employment duty and public safety duty
Company B Engineers Competing Loyalty Resolution in Favor of Public Safety
Company B engineers owed loyalty to their employer and, through the production relationship, to Company A as the designing client, but both loyalties were subordinate to the paramount duty to protect public safety.
Competing Loyalty Public Safety Primacy Resolution Obligation
Company B engineers were obligated to resolve the conflict between their loyalty to their employer (Company B) and their paramount public welfare obligation in favor of public safety, recognizing that the obligation to protect persons in proximity to potentially life-endangering equipment categorically supersedes employer loyalty.
Throughout the period following identification of safety deficiencies and employer override
Company B Engineers Cross-Firm Design Safety Deficiency Escalation
Company B engineers identified life-endangering deficiencies in Company A's plans; they escalated through their employer; Company A dismissed the concerns; Company B officials instructed continuation; further escalation was required.
Cross-Firm Design Safety Deficiency Escalation Obligation
Company B engineers were obligated to escalate identified miscalculations and technical deficiencies in Company A's plans and specifications through their employer to Company A, and — upon Company A's dismissal and employer override — to pursue further escalation to appropriate authorities rather than proceeding with production of potentially life-endangering equipment.
From identification of deficiencies through exhaustion of internal escalation channels
Company B Engineers Cross-Firm Safety Concern Graduated Internal Escalation
Cross-Firm Safety Concern Graduated Internal Escalation Capability
Company B engineers demonstrated the capability to escalate identified safety concerns through their employer's officials as the appropriate internal channel, resulting in the concern being relayed to Company A
Escalation of identified design deficiencies through Company B's internal chain of command to Company A
Calling the matter to the attention of appropriate officials of their employer, who in turn advised Company A of the safety concerns
Company B Engineers Cross-Firm Technical Safety Deficiency Identification
Cross-Firm Technical Safety Deficiency Identification Capability
Company B engineers possessed the technical competence to review plans and specifications received from Company A and identify miscalculations and technical deficiencies creating life-safety risk to persons in proximity to the equipment
Applied during review of machinery plans and specifications received from Company A for production by Company B
Identification of miscalculations and technical deficiencies in Company A's plans and specifications that would render the equipment potentially unsuitable and dangerous
The engineers of Company 'B' in reviewing the plans and specifications came to the conclusion that they included certain miscalculations and technical deficiencies of a nature that the final product might be unsuitable for the purposes of the ultimate users, and that the equipment, if built according to the original plans and specifications, might endanger the lives of persons in proximity to it.
Company B Engineers Employer-Ordered Execution of Disputed Design
From employer's instruction to proceed with production through ethics board's determination that refusal is mandatory
Employer-Ordered Execution of Disputed Safety-Deficient Design State
Company B engineers under direct employer instruction to proceed with production of machinery designed by Company A, which Company B engineers believe is unsafe, after inter-firm escalation has been rejected
Ethics board determination that Company B engineers must refuse and withdraw; engineers' compliance with that obligation
So long as the engineers of Company 'B' hold to their opinion that the machinery as originally designed and specified would be unsafe to the public they should refuse to participate in its processing or production under the mandate of Section 2(c)
Employer's instruction to Company B engineers to proceed with production despite their documented safety concerns and Company A's rejection of those concerns
Company B Engineers Employer Instruction Non-Override Recognition
Company B officials, after relaying safety concerns to Company A and accepting Company A's dismissal, instructed Company B engineers to proceed with production. Company B engineers were required to refuse despite this employer instruction.
Employer Instruction Non-Override of Production Safety Refusal Obligation
Company B engineers were obligated to recognize that their employer's instruction to proceed with production did not override their professional obligation to refuse, and that compliance with that instruction — even under threat of employment loss — would constitute an independent ethical violation.
Upon receipt of employer instruction to proceed with production despite unresolved safety concerns
Company B Engineers Employer Instruction Non-Override of Safety Refusal
Company B's officials instructed engineers to proceed after Company A provided a self-serving assurance of adequacy. The BER established that this employer instruction did not override the engineers' professional safety obligation.
Non-Engineer Authority Safety Override Resistance Constraint
Company B engineers were constrained to refuse to comply with their employer's instruction to proceed with production, because that instruction did not override their professional obligation to refuse participation in engineering operations they believed would endanger public health and safety.
NSPE Code of Ethics Section 2(c) (historical); BER determination
After employer issued instruction to proceed following Company A's dismissal of safety concerns
Company B Engineers Employment Hardship Non-Override of Code Mandate
The BER explicitly concluded that employment difficulty and job loss risk are subordinate to the Code's requirements, establishing that these personal economic considerations cannot override the safety mandate.
Employment Hardship Non-Override of Code Safety Mandate Constraint
Company B engineers were constrained to treat the requirements of the Code as superseding employment hardship considerations — including the prospect of a most difficult employment situation or loss of employment — when those requirements mandated refusal to participate in production of unsafe equipment.
Throughout the production refusal decision
Company B Engineers Employment Loss Acceptance Instance
Employment Loss Mandatory Cost of Safety Refusal Acceptance Capability
Company B engineers possessed the capability to recognize and accept that potential loss of employment resulting from their refusal to participate in production under unsafe plans was a cost subordinate to the requirements of the ethics code, and that employment considerations could not override their paramount public safety obligation.
Company B engineers faced potential employment termination for refusing to proceed with production under plans they believed unsafe, requiring them to weigh employment security against ethics code obligations
Recognition that refusing to comply with employer's instruction to proceed with production might cause a most difficult situation or even lead to loss of employment, and acceptance that these considerations are subordinate to the requirements of the Code
Company B Engineers Employment Loss Acceptance as Cost of Safety Refusal
The BER explicitly acknowledged that Company B engineers' refusal to comply with their employer's instruction to proceed with production might lead to loss of employment, but held that this consideration was subordinate to the Code's requirements.
Employment Loss Acceptance as Mandatory Cost of Public Safety Whistleblowing Obligation
Company B engineers were obligated to accept the potential loss of employment as the cost of fulfilling their ethical obligation to refuse production participation under unsafe plans, recognizing that employment security considerations are subordinate to the requirements of the Code.
Upon determination that compliance with employer instruction would require participation in unsafe operations
Company B Engineers Employment Loss Acceptance for Public Safety
Company B engineers faced compounded organizational pressure from both Company A and their own employer; fulfillment of their public safety obligation required acceptance of the employment consequences of refusal.
Company B engineers were obligated to accept the potential loss of employment as the cost of refusing to produce life-endangering equipment and of escalating safety concerns to appropriate authorities, recognizing that the paramount public welfare obligation cannot be conditioned on employment security.
Upon determination that proceeding with production would violate the paramount public welfare obligation
Company B Engineers Employment Loss Risk from Safety Withdrawal Obligation
From the point at which Company B engineers are instructed to proceed with production of the disputed design, through the ethics board's determination that employment considerations are subordinate to code requirements
Employment Loss Risk from Safety Obligation Compliance State
Engineers of Company B facing potential employment termination as consequence of mandatory code-required refusal to proceed with unsafe design production
Engineers' compliance with code obligation to withdraw, or resolution of safety dispute through impartial review
Employer instruction to proceed with production of machinery design that Company B engineers believe is unsafe, creating direct conflict between employment obligation and mandatory code withdrawal requirement
Company B Engineers Ethics Code Purposive Reading Application
The BER rejected the argument that Company B engineers could ethically proceed with production because they were not being asked to sign or seal plans, holding that this was too narrow a reading of the Code.
Ethics Code Purposive Extension Beyond Literal Text Safety Participation Obligation
Company B engineers and the BER were obligated to reject the literal reading of Section 2(c) that would have permitted production participation merely because Company B engineers were not being asked to sign or seal plans, and instead to apply the code's protective purpose to prohibit all forms of engineering participation in operations endangering public health and safety.
A literal construction of the Code language may, therefore, indicate that the engineers of Company 'B' may ethically proceed with their role in the production process. But we think that this is too narrow a reading of the Code
At the point of determining whether production participation was ethically permissible
the purpose and force of Section 2(c) is that the engineer will not participate in any way in engineering operations which endanger the public health and safety
Company B Engineers Ethics Code Purposive Reading Application Capability Instance
Production Participation Code Provision Purposive Extension Self-Application Capability
Company B engineers possessed the capability to recognize that the literal scope of Section 2(c) — limited to signing, sealing, or completing plans — did not technically apply to their production role, but to correctly apply the purposive interpretation that the provision's mandate extends to refusing participation in any engineering operations endangering public health and safety.
Company B engineers reviewed plans from Company A, identified safety deficiencies, and were required to determine whether Section 2(c)'s literal scope (sign/seal/complete) or its purposive scope (participate in any unsafe operations) governed their obligation
Recognition that a literal reading of Section 2(c) would permit production participation, followed by application of the purposive interpretation that the code prohibits participation in any unsafe engineering operations regardless of whether the engineer signed or sealed the plans
A literal construction of the Code language may, therefore, indicate that the engineers of Company 'B' may ethically proceed with their role in the production process.
Company B Engineers Faithful Agent Public Safety Dilemma Recognition Instance
Faithful Agent Public Safety Paramount Classical Dilemma Recognition Capability
Company B engineers possessed the capability to recognize and correctly frame the classical dilemma between their obligation as faithful agents to their employer (Company B) and their paramount obligation to protect public health and safety — and to resolve that dilemma in favor of the paramount public safety obligation.
Company B engineers faced direct conflict between employer loyalty (proceed with production as instructed) and paramount public safety duty (refuse to participate in operations believed to endanger public health and safety)
Recognition that employer instruction to proceed with production conflicted with paramount public safety obligation, and resolution of that conflict in favor of public safety through refusal to participate in production under unsafe plans
By their actions the engineers of Company 'B' regarded their 'duty to the public welfare as paramount,' as required by Section 2(a).
Company B Engineers Faithful Agent Public Safety Paramount Dilemma Recognition
Company B engineers were required to recognize and correctly frame the classical ethical dilemma between their obligation to act as faithful agents to their employer (Company B) and their paramount obligation to protect public health and safety — and to understand that the public safety obligation takes precedence when the conflict is direct and demonstrable
Core ethical dilemma arising from Company B officials' instruction to proceed despite identified life-safety risks in Company A's plans
The structural conflict between employer instruction to proceed with production and the engineers' professional judgment that the equipment would endanger lives
Company B Engineers Genuine Withdrawal Non-Substitution by Disclaimer
The ethical withdrawal required by the NSPE Code when public safety is endangered cannot be satisfied by a unilateral internal declaration of non-responsibility while continuing production work.
Genuine Project Withdrawal Non-Substitution by Responsibility Disclaimer Obligation
If Company B engineers determined that withdrawal was required, they were obligated to effect a genuine cessation of all professional involvement in the production engagement rather than merely disclaiming responsibility for the deficient components while continuing to participate in production.
If and when Company B engineers determined that withdrawal was the appropriate ethical recourse
Company B Engineers Going-Along Prohibition After Employer Override
After Company A dismissed safety concerns and Company B officials instructed engineers to proceed, Company B engineers faced the prohibition on going along without active dissent or escalation.
Going-Along Prohibition After Client Safety Refusal Obligation
Company B engineers were obligated to refrain from silently proceeding with production after their employer instructed continuation following Company A's dismissal of safety concerns, recognizing that passive acquiescence after a safety override constitutes an independent ethical violation.
Upon receipt of Company B officials' instruction to proceed with production despite unresolved safety concerns
Company B Engineers Going-Along Prohibition Self-Recognition
Going-Along Without Dissent Independent Ethical Violation Self-Recognition Capability
Company B engineers were required to recognize that proceeding with production after their employer's override — without further dissent, escalation, or withdrawal — would constitute an independent ethical violation separate from any failure to report to public authorities
Triggered when Company B officials instructed engineers to proceed with production after accepting Company A's self-serving safety dismissal
The ethical obligation arising from the employer's instruction to proceed despite unresolved safety concerns identified by Company B engineers
Company B Engineers Graduated Escalation Navigation After Override
Graduated Escalation Navigation Capability
Company B engineers were required to navigate graduated escalation pathways — from internal escalation through Company B officials, to external escalation to appropriate regulatory or professional authorities — after their internal escalation was dismissed by Company A and overridden by their own employer
Required after Company B officials' instruction to proceed, when internal escalation had been exhausted without resolution of the identified life-safety risk
The ethical obligation to continue pursuing resolution through escalating channels after the internal escalation pathway (Company B officials → Company A) failed to resolve the safety concern
Company B Engineers Graduated Internal Escalation Through Officials
Company B engineers identified miscalculations and technical deficiencies in Company A's plans and specifications that could endanger lives; they escalated internally to Company B officials who then relayed the concern to Company A.
Graduated Internal Escalation Obligation
Company B engineers were obligated to escalate identified safety concerns through their employer's officials as the appropriate internal channel before any external escalation, which they fulfilled by calling the matter to the attention of appropriate officials of their employer.
Upon identification of miscalculations and technical deficiencies in Company A's plans and specifications
Company B Engineers Identified Safety Deficiency in Company A Plans
From the moment Company B engineers completed their review of Company A's plans, persisting through the entire scenario
Plans and specifications prepared by Company A engineers for machinery
Not terminated within the scenario — the safety risk remains unresolved
final product might be unsuitable for the purposes of the ultimate users
Company B engineers' technical review concluding that Company A's plans contained miscalculations and deficiencies that could endanger lives of persons in proximity to the equipment
Company B Engineers Impartial Expert Referral for Honest Safety Disagreement
The BER identified impartial expert referral as the appropriate mechanism for resolving genuine honest technical disagreements between designing and executing firm engineers on safety adequacy.
Company B Officials, Company A Officials, and Company B Engineers
Inter-Firm Safety Dispute Impartial Technical Arbitration Referral Constraint
Where Company A engineers and Company B engineers held an apparent honest difference of opinion about the safety features of the machinery, both parties were constrained to refer the question to an impartial body of experts — such as a technical engineering society in the particular field of practice — for an independent determination, rather than resolving the dispute through Company A's unilateral self-serving assurance.
After inter-firm escalation produced irreconcilable honest disagreement
Company B Engineers Insist or Withdraw Binary Safety Response
The BER's analysis of Section 2(c) established the binary nature of the required response: refuse to participate (insist) or withdraw — with passive continuation prohibited.
Insist-or-Withdraw Binary Safety Response Constraint
Company B engineers were constrained to either insist that production not proceed under Company A's unsafe plans and specifications, or withdraw from further service on the project — with no ethically permissible intermediate option of silent continuation.
The last sentence of Section 2(c) is likewise clear in requiring that the engineers not only notify proper authority of the dangers which they believe to exist, but that they also 'withdraw from further service on the project.' This mandate applies to engineers serving clients or employers.
After Company A dismissed safety concerns and Company B employer instructed continuation
So long as the engineers of Company 'B' hold to their opinion that the machinery as originally designed and specified would be unsafe to the public they should refuse to participate in its processing or production under the mandate of Section 2(c).
Company B Engineers Inter-Firm Escalation Completed Without Resolution
From Company A's rejection of Company B's safety concern through the ethics board's analysis and determination
The engineers of Company 'B' fulfilled their obligation under Section l(c) of the Code by notifying their employer that they did not believe the project would be successful as designed by the engineers of Company 'A'
Inter-Firm Design Safety Escalation Completed Without Resolution State
The state in which Company B engineers have completed all available escalation channels — notifying their employer, who notified Company A — and the safety concern has been formally rejected by Company A, leaving no further procedural pathway within the existing contractual relationship
Referral to impartial expert body, withdrawal of Company B engineers, or design modification
They also met the requirements of Section 2 in pointing out the consequences to be expected from proceeding under the original plans and specifications
Company A's formal assertion that the design is adequate and safe, rejecting Company B's safety concern after inter-firm escalation
Company B Engineers Non-Acquiescence to Employer Production Override
Company B officials accepted Company A's assurance of design adequacy and instructed Company B engineers to proceed; Company B engineers retained an independent obligation not to proceed with production of potentially life-endangering equipment.
Production Employer Safety Override Non-Acquiescence Obligation
Company B engineers were obligated to refuse to acquiesce in their employer's instruction to proceed with production after the employer accepted Company A's self-serving dismissal of safety concerns without independent technical review, recognizing that the employer's override lacked authority to extinguish the engineers' paramount public welfare obligation.
Upon receipt of Company B officials' instruction to proceed following Company A's dismissal
Company B Engineers Paramount Safety Normative Hierarchy Application
Paramount Safety Normative Hierarchy Supremacy Application Capability
Company B engineers were required to recognize that their paramount obligation to protect public health, safety, and welfare supersedes their faithful agent duties to their employer and any deference owed to Company A as the designing firm — and to apply this normative hierarchy in resolving the conflict between employer instruction and public safety
Applied to resolve the conflict between Company B officials' instruction to proceed and the engineers' professional judgment about life-safety risk
The ethical obligation to prioritize public safety over employer loyalty when the equipment might endanger lives of persons in proximity to it
Company B Engineers Paramount Safety Normative Hierarchy Application Instance
Company B engineers possessed the capability to recognize that Section 2(a)'s designation of public welfare duty as 'paramount' established a normative hierarchy in which public safety obligations superseded their faithful agent duties to their employer, and to correctly apply this supremacy hierarchy when resolving the conflict between employer instruction and public safety obligation.
Company B engineers applied the paramount public welfare duty under Section 2(a) to resolve the conflict between employer loyalty and public safety obligation in favor of public safety
Application of the paramount public welfare duty under Section 2(a) to override employer instruction to proceed with production, recognizing that employment considerations are subordinate to the code's requirements
Company B Engineers Participation Bar in Unsafe Machinery Design
From the point at which Company B engineers formed their sincere belief that the design was unsafe, continuing through the ethics board's analysis and determination
Executing Engineer Participation Bar in Unsafe Design State
Engineers of Company B in relation to the machinery design produced by Company A
Ethics board determination that Company B engineers must refuse to participate and withdraw from the project pending impartial resolution or design modification
Company B engineers' assessment that the machinery as designed by Company A would be unsafe to the public, combined with employer instruction to proceed with production
Company B Engineers Passive Acquiescence Ethical Insufficiency Recognition
Passive Acquiescence Ethical Insufficiency Self-Recognition Capability
Company B engineers were required to recognize that notifying their officials and then passively proceeding with production after the employer's override — without further active escalation — does not satisfy the professional ethical obligation and constitutes an independent ethical failure
Arises after Company B officials instructed engineers to proceed, creating risk of passive acquiescence to known safety violation
The ethical obligation arising from the risk that Company B engineers, having notified officials, might consider their duty discharged and proceed passively with production
The engineers of Company 'B' in reviewing the plans and specifications came to the conclusion that they included certain miscalculations and technical deficiencies... might endanger the lives of persons in proximity to it.
Company B Engineers Passive Acquiescence Independent Ethical Failure Risk
Company B engineers had identified life-endangering deficiencies; their employer overrode their concerns; passive continuation of production work would constitute an independent ethical violation beyond mere failure to escalate further.
Passive Acquiescence to Known Safety Violation Independent Ethical Failure Obligation
Company B engineers were obligated to recognize that proceeding passively with production after notifying their officials — without further active insistence or withdrawal — would constitute an independent ethical failure separate from any failure to report externally.
Ongoing from the moment Company B officials instructed continuation of production
Company B Engineers Passive Acquiescence Insufficiency Recognition Instance
Company B engineers possessed the capability to recognize that passively proceeding with production after notifying their officials — without further active escalation, refusal, or withdrawal — would constitute an independent ethical failure, and that the ethics code required affirmative refusal to participate rather than passive compliance with the employer's override instruction.
After Company B officials overrode their safety concerns, Company B engineers were required to recognize that passive compliance with the production instruction would itself constitute an ethical violation independent of any failure to report to external authorities
Recognition that going along with production after employer override would be ethically insufficient, and that the code required active refusal to participate in production under plans believed to be unsafe
The further and more difficult question, however, is whether the engineers of Company 'B' are required or ethically permitted to refuse to proceed with the production on the basis of plans and specifications which they continue to regard as unsafe.
Company B Engineers Post-Client-Override Public Safety Escalation
The risk identified — potential endangerment of lives of persons in proximity to the equipment — was sufficiently serious to require escalation beyond the internal employer-client chain after that chain failed to resolve the concern.
Post-Client-Override Public Safety Escalation Obligation
Company B engineers were obligated, after Company A's dismissal of safety concerns and their employer's override, to evaluate whether the residual risk of life-endangering equipment required escalation beyond the employer-client relationship to regulatory or public authorities.
After exhaustion of internal escalation channels
Company B Engineers Post-Client-Override Public Safety Escalation Assessment
Post-Client-Refusal Public Safety Authority Escalation Assessment Capability
Company B engineers, having had their safety concerns dismissed by Company A and overridden by their own employer, were required to assess whether the residual public safety risk was sufficient to trigger an obligation to notify appropriate public authorities — recognizing that neither Company A's dismissal nor their employer's override extinguished their independent professional obligation
Arises after Company A's dismissal and Company B officials' override, when the safety risk to persons in proximity to the equipment remains unresolved
The ethical obligation to evaluate external escalation pathways after internal escalation through Company B officials and relay to Company A both failed to resolve the safety concern
Company B Engineers Production Employer Safety Override Non-Acquiescence
Production Employer Safety Override Non-Acquiescence Capability
Company B engineers were required to refuse to acquiesce in their employer's instruction to proceed with production after the employer accepted Company A's self-serving safety dismissal, recognizing that the employer override does not discharge their independent professional obligation to protect public safety
Triggered by Company B officials' instruction to proceed with production following Company A's dismissal of safety concerns
The ethical obligation arising when Company B officials instructed engineers to proceed despite unresolved safety concerns about life-endangering equipment
Company B Engineers Production Participation Refusal Obligation
After Company A dismissed Company B engineers' safety concerns and Company B officials instructed continuation of production, Company B engineers were required to refuse to participate in production operations under the deficient plans.
Production Participation Prohibition in Unsafe Design Operations Obligation
Company B engineers were obligated to refuse to participate in the production or processing of machinery under Company A's plans and specifications for as long as they held the opinion that those plans were unsafe to the public, under the mandate of Section 2(c) of the Code.
For as long as Company B engineers held the opinion that the machinery as designed was unsafe to the public
Company B Engineers Professional Disassociation Decision
From the point at which all escalation has been exhausted and employer insists on proceeding, through the engineers' decision to withdraw
The last sentence of Section 2(c) is likewise clear in requiring that the engineers not only notify proper authority of the dangers which they believe to exist, but that they also 'withdraw from further service on the project.' This mandate applies to engineers serving clients or employers
Professional Disassociation Decision State
Company B engineers' obligation to decide whether to withdraw from further service on the project after all escalation pathways have been exhausted and the employer continues to insist on proceeding with the disputed design
Ethics board's determination that Section 2(c) requires engineers to notify proper authority and withdraw from further service when the client or employer insists on proceeding with an unsafe design
Company B Engineers Professional Withdrawal Decision
Professional Withdrawal Decision Capability
Company B engineers were required to recognize when continued participation in production of the deficient equipment would constitute ethical acquiescence to their employer's override of public safety requirements, and to act on that recognition by withdrawing from the project rather than proceeding under unsafe conditions
Required as an alternative to insistence on corrective action when Company B officials instructed engineers to proceed with production despite identified life-safety risks
The ethical obligation to withdraw from production if insistence on corrective action failed and the employer continued to instruct production of potentially life-endangering equipment
Company B Engineers Project Failure Notification to Employer
Company B engineers reviewed plans and specifications from Company A for machinery to be used in a manufacturing process, identified miscalculations and technical deficiencies, and notified their employer of their belief that the project would not be successful as designed.
Project Success Failure Risk Employer Notification Obligation
Company B engineers were obligated to notify their employer that they did not believe the project would be successful as designed by Company A engineers, fulfilling their faithful agent obligation under Section 1(c) of the Code.
Upon identification of miscalculations and technical deficiencies in Company A's plans and specifications, before proceeding with production
Company B Engineers Project Failure Notification to Employer Instance
Formal Written Project Failure Risk Advisory Capability
Company B engineers possessed the capability to notify their employer that they did not believe the project would be successful as designed by Company A engineers, fulfilling their obligation under Section 1(c) of the Code to advise their employer when they believed a project would not be successful.
Company B engineers fulfilled their initial obligation under Section 1(c) by notifying their employer of the project's anticipated failure before the more difficult question of production participation refusal arose
Notification to Company B officials that the project would not be successful as designed by Company A, fulfilling the Section 1(c) obligation before the more difficult question of production refusal arose
The engineers of Company 'B' fulfilled their obligation under Section 1(c) of the Code by notifying their employer that they did not believe the project would be successful as designed by the engineers of Company 'A'.
Company B Engineers Project Withdrawal If Production Proceeds
Company A rejected safety concerns and Company B officials instructed continuation; Company B engineers' paramount public welfare obligation required active insistence or genuine withdrawal, not silent compliance.
Client Safety Violation Insistence or Project Withdrawal Obligation
Company B engineers were obligated to insist that production not proceed with the deficient plans and specifications, or — if their insistence was rejected — to withdraw from the production engagement rather than passively participating in the manufacture of potentially life-endangering equipment.
Upon receipt of instruction to proceed with production of equipment identified as potentially life-endangering
Company B Engineers Project Withdrawal Obligation
Section 2(c) required engineers to notify proper authority of dangers and withdraw from further service on the project when a client or employer insists on unprofessional conduct. Company B engineers were required to effect genuine withdrawal from production participation.
Company B engineers were obligated to withdraw from further service on the project — refusing to proceed with production — when Company A rejected their safety concerns and Company B officials instructed continuation, under the mandate of Section 2(c) requiring withdrawal from further service on the project.
Upon employer instruction to proceed with production despite unresolved safety concerns
Company B Engineers Project Withdrawal Obligation Instance
Company B engineers possessed the capability to recognize that continued participation in production under plans they believed unsafe would constitute ethical acquiescence to their employer's override of public safety requirements, and to act on that recognition by withdrawing from further service on the project.
Company B engineers were required to withdraw from further service on the project when Company A rejected their safety concerns and their employer overrode their objections, as mandated by Section 2(c)
Obligation to withdraw from further service on the project under Section 2(c)'s mandate, after Company A rejected their safety concerns and Company B officials instructed continuation of production
Company B Engineers Proper Authority Notification After Override Instance
Proper Authority Notification After Cross-Firm Safety Override Capability
Company B engineers possessed the capability to identify and notify the proper authority of the dangers they believed to exist in Company A's plans and specifications, after Company A dismissed their concerns and Company B officials overrode their safety objections, understanding this notification obligation as mandatory under Section 2(c).
After Company A's dismissal of safety concerns and Company B officials' override, Company B engineers were obligated to notify proper authority of the believed dangers and withdraw from further service
Obligation to notify proper authority of believed dangers in Company A's plans after internal and cross-firm escalation failed, coordinated with the simultaneous obligation to withdraw from further service on the project
Company B Engineers Proper Authority Notification of Believed Dangers
Section 2(c) required not only withdrawal but also notification of proper authority — both elements were mandatory, not optional, once the safety concern was sustained and unresolved.
Company B engineers were constrained by Section 2(c) to notify the proper authority of the dangers they believed to exist in Company A's plans and specifications, after Company A dismissed their concerns and their employer overrode their safety judgment.
NSPE Code of Ethics Section 2(c) (historical)
After employer override and inter-firm escalation exhaustion
Company B Engineers Public Safety Escalation
Company B engineers were required to recognize that the identified risk to persons in proximity to the potentially life-endangering equipment exceeded the employer-client relationship and required escalation to regulatory authorities or public bodies, and to act on that recognition after internal escalation failed
Required after exhaustion of internal escalation pathways when the life-safety risk to persons in proximity to the equipment remained unresolved
The ethical obligation to escalate to appropriate public authorities after Company A's dismissal and Company B officials' override left the life-safety risk unresolved
Company B Engineers Public Safety at Risk from Disputed Machinery Design
From Company B engineers' identification of safety deficiencies through resolution of the safety dispute or withdrawal from the project
they did not believe the project would be successful as designed by the engineers of Company 'A'
The public health and safety risk posed by the machinery design that Company B engineers believe is unsafe, which would be realized if production proceeds under the original plans and specifications
Design modification addressing safety concerns, impartial expert determination that design is safe, or withdrawal of Company B engineers preventing their participation in unsafe production
Section 2(c) of the Code is specific in holding that engineers will not complete, sign, or seal plans and/or specifications that are not of a design safe to the public health and welfare
the engineer will not participate in any way in engineering operations which endanger the public health and safety
Company B engineers' assessment that the machinery as designed by Company A would be unsafe to the public if produced and deployed
Company B Engineers Public Welfare Paramount Duty Fulfillment
By notifying their employer of safety concerns and refusing to proceed with production under plans they regarded as unsafe, Company B engineers fulfilled their paramount public welfare obligation.
Company B engineers were obligated to regard their duty to the public welfare as paramount, as required by Section 2(a) of the Code, in their response to the identified safety deficiencies in Company A's plans and specifications.
By their actions the engineers of Company 'B' regarded their 'duty to the public welfare as paramount,' as required by Section 2(a)
Throughout the period during which safety concerns remained unresolved
Company B Engineers Refusing Unsafe Production
{'employer': 'Company B (production firm)', 'safety_stance': 'Continued belief that machinery as designed is unsafe to the public', 'code_obligations_invoked': ['Section 1(c)', 'Section 2', 'Section 2(a)', 'Section 2(c)'], 'consequence_accepted': 'Potential loss of employment'}
Engineers of Company B, having identified safety deficiencies in Company A's plans and specifications, fulfilled their obligation by notifying their employer and pointing out consequences, and are now ethically required to refuse participation in production so long as they hold the opinion that the machinery is unsafe — even at the risk of loss of employment.
{'type': 'employer', 'target': 'Company B Safety-Overriding Production Employer'}
{'type': 'peer_dispute', 'target': 'Company A Deficient Machinery Design Engineers'}
Unsafe Process Refusing Industrial Engineer
the engineers of Company 'B' fulfilled their obligation under Section l(c) of the Code by notifying their employer
So long as the engineers of Company 'B' hold to their opinion that the machinery as originally designed and specified would be unsafe to the public they should refuse to participate in its processing or production
the engineers of Company 'B' regarded their 'duty to the public welfare as paramount'
they also met the requirements of Section 2 in pointing out the consequences
{'employer': 'Company B', 'function': 'Technical review of received design plans for production feasibility and safety', 'safety_finding': 'Miscalculations and technical deficiencies; equipment might endanger lives of persons in proximity', 'escalation_action': 'Notified appropriate officials of Company B'}
Reviewed plans and specifications received from Company A; identified miscalculations and technical deficiencies making the equipment potentially unsuitable and hazardous; escalated findings to Company B officials; subsequently instructed by Company B officials to proceed despite unresolved safety concerns.
{'type': 'employed_by', 'target': 'Company B Officials Safety-Overriding Production Authority'}
{'type': 'escalated_to', 'target': 'Company B Officials Safety-Overriding Production Authority'}
{'type': 'peer_reviewer_of', 'target': 'Company A Engineers Deficient Machinery Designers'}
Safety-Discovering Manufacturing Review Engineer
The engineers of Company 'B' in reviewing the plans and specifications came to the conclusion that they included certain miscalculations and technical deficiencies of a nature that the final product might be unsuitable for the purposes of the ultimate users
The engineers of Company 'B' called the matter to the attention of appropriate officials of their employer
Company B Engineers Safety Consequence Communication to Employer
Having identified miscalculations and technical deficiencies in Company A's plans and specifications, Company B engineers communicated the expected consequences of proceeding under those plans to their employer.
Safety Consequence Communication to Employer Before Production Obligation
Company B engineers were obligated to point out to their employer the consequences to be expected from proceeding under Company A's original plans and specifications, fulfilling the requirements of Section 2 of the Code.
Upon identification of safety deficiencies, before production commenced
Company B Engineers Safety Consequence Communication to Employer Instance
Company B engineers possessed the capability to point out to their employer the consequences to be expected from proceeding under Company A's original plans and specifications, fulfilling the requirements of Section 2 of the Code by clearly communicating the safety consequences of the proposed course of action.
Company B engineers communicated the expected consequences of proceeding under Company A's plans to their employer, fulfilling the Section 2 requirement before the more difficult production refusal question arose
Communication to Company B officials of the consequences to be expected from proceeding under Company A's original plans and specifications, fulfilling Section 2's requirement to clearly point out consequences when engineering judgment is overruled
They also met the requirements of Section 2 in pointing out the consequences to be expected from proceeding under the original plans and specifications.
Company B Engineers Section 1c Employer Notification Fulfillment
Company B engineers identified miscalculations and technical deficiencies in Company A's plans and specifications for machinery, triggering the obligation to notify their employer of anticipated project failure.
Company B engineers were constrained by Section 1(c) of the Code to notify their employer that they did not believe the project would be successful as designed by Company A engineers — a constraint they fulfilled.
NSPE Code of Ethics Section 1(c) (historical)
The engineers of Company 'B' fulfilled their obligation under Section l(c) of the Code by notifying their employer that they did not believe the project would be successful as designed by the engineers of Company 'A'.
Company B Engineers Section 2 Consequence Communication Fulfillment
After identifying safety deficiencies in Company A's design, Company B engineers were required to communicate the expected consequences of proceeding under those plans to their employer.
Company B engineers were constrained by Section 2 of the Code to point out the consequences to be expected from proceeding under Company A's original plans and specifications — a constraint they fulfilled.
NSPE Code of Ethics Section 2 (historical)
Company B Engineers Section 2a Public Welfare Paramount Duty
Company B engineers' actions in escalating safety concerns and refusing to proceed with production were grounded in the paramount public welfare duty under Section 2(a).
Company B engineers were constrained by Section 2(a) of the Code to regard their duty to the public welfare as paramount over employer instructions and business considerations.
NSPE Code of Ethics Section 2(a) (historical)
Company B Engineers Section 2c Withdrawal and Notification Mandate
The BER clarified that the Section 2(c) withdrawal and notification mandate applies to engineers serving employers, not only to engineers serving clients, closing a potential interpretive gap.
Section 2(c) Withdrawal Mandate Employer-Client Symmetry Constraint
Company B engineers were constrained by Section 2(c) to both notify proper authority of the dangers they believed to exist in Company A's plans and specifications, and to withdraw from further service on the project — with this mandate applying equally because they served an employer rather than a client.
After exhaustion of internal and inter-firm escalation channels
Company B Engineers Sustained Production Refusal Persistence Instance
Sustained Safety Opinion Production Refusal Persistence Capability
Company B engineers possessed the capability to maintain their refusal to participate in production for as long as they held the opinion that the machinery as designed by Company A would be unsafe to the public, recognizing that this obligation persisted regardless of employer pressure or economic consequences.
After Company A dismissed safety concerns and Company B officials overrode the engineers' objections, Company B engineers were required to maintain their production refusal for as long as they held their safety opinion
Sustained refusal to proceed with production under Company A's plans and specifications after Company A dismissed their safety concerns and Company B officials instructed continuation, maintaining the refusal as long as the safety opinion persisted
Company B Engineers Sustained Safety Opinion Participation Refusal Duration
The BER established that the refusal obligation persists coextensively with the safety opinion — it is not discharged by a single escalation attempt or by the employer's override instruction.
Sustained Safety Opinion Participation Refusal Persistence Constraint
Company B engineers were constrained to refuse participation in the processing or production of the machinery under Company A's plans and specifications for as long as they held the opinion that the machinery as originally designed and specified would be unsafe to the public.
NSPE Code of Ethics Section 2(c) (historical); BER purposive interpretation
For the entire duration of Company B engineers' sustained safety opinion
Company B Engineers Sustained Safety Opinion Persistence
The BER held that Company B engineers should refuse to participate in production 'so long as' they held their opinion that the machinery was unsafe, indicating that the refusal obligation is temporally coextensive with the sustained safety opinion.
Sustained Safety Opinion Production Refusal Persistence Obligation
Company B engineers were obligated to maintain their refusal to participate in production for as long as they held the opinion that the machinery as originally designed and specified would be unsafe to the public, recognizing that the obligation to refuse persists throughout the period during which the safety concern remains unresolved.
For the entire duration during which Company B engineers held the opinion that the machinery was unsafe
Company B Officials Designing Firm Self-Serving Dismissal Non-Acceptance
Company B officials relayed safety concerns to Company A and then accepted Company A's self-assessment of adequacy without independent verification, instructing Company B engineers to proceed — an insufficient resolution of a life-safety dispute.
Designing Firm Self-Serving Safety Dismissal Non-Acceptance Obligation
Company B officials were obligated to refuse to accept Company A's self-serving assurance that its own plans and specifications were adequate and safe as a sufficient resolution of the safety concerns raised by Company B engineers, and to require independent technical review or impartial arbitration before instructing engineers to proceed.
Upon receipt of Company A's dismissal of safety concerns
Company B Officials Instruct Engineers to Proceed Despite Unresolved Safety Concern
From the moment Company B officials instructed engineers to proceed with the work, persisting until engineers comply, refuse, or disassociate
Company B engineers' professional situation after receiving instruction to proceed
Not terminated within the scenario — engineers face the decision at the scenario's end
Company B officials' instruction to its engineers to proceed with building the equipment as designed and specified by Company A, after Company A rejected the safety concern
Company B Officials Safety-Overriding Production Authority
{'employer': 'Company B', 'function': 'Production management and inter-company liaison', 'response_to_safety_concern': "Relayed to Company A but ultimately instructed engineers to proceed after Company A's dismissal"}
Received safety escalation from Company B engineers; relayed concern to Company A; accepted Company A's dismissal; instructed Company B engineers to proceed with production of the potentially hazardous equipment.
{'type': 'counterpart', 'target': 'Company A Officials Safety-Concern-Dismissing Authority'}
{'type': 'directed_to_proceed', 'target': 'Company B Engineers Safety-Discovering Manufacturing Reviewers'}
{'type': 'employs', 'target': 'Company B Engineers Safety-Discovering Manufacturing Reviewers'}
Company 'B' in reviewing the plans and specifications came to the conclusion that they included certain miscalculations
Company 'B' called the matter to the attention of appropriate officials of their employer who, in turn, advised Company 'A'
The officials of Company 'B' instructed its engineers to proceed with the work
Company B Officials Self-Serving Safety Dismissal Non-Acceptance
Self-Serving Design Firm Safety Assurance Objective Scrutiny Capability
Company B officials were required to recognize that Company A's reply — that its own engineers felt the design was adequate and safe — was an inherently self-serving assurance that could not be accepted as an objective determination of safety adequacy, and to demand independent verification rather than accepting it and instructing their engineers to proceed
Triggered when Company A replied that its engineers felt the design was adequate and safe, and Company B officials accepted this self-assessment without independent verification
Company B officials' failure to apply appropriate skepticism to Company A's self-serving safety assurance, resulting in the instruction to proceed with production
Company B Officials (Safety-Overriding Production Authority)
Company B Officials and Company A Officials Cross-Firm Irreconcilable Safety Dispute Arbitration Referral
Cross-Firm Irreconcilable Safety Dispute Impartial Arbitration Referral Capability
Both Company B officials and Company A officials were required to recognize that the irreconcilable technical safety dispute between Company B engineers and Company A engineers could not be resolved through bilateral negotiation, and to refer the matter to an appropriate impartial technical engineering society for independent adjudication
Required when Company A's dismissal of Company B's safety concerns created an irreconcilable cross-firm technical safety dispute that bilateral negotiation could not resolve
The ethical obligation arising from the irreconcilable disagreement between Company B engineers (identifying miscalculations) and Company A engineers (asserting adequacy) — requiring referral to an impartial technical arbitration body
Company B Officials and Company A Officials (jointly)
Company B Officials and Company A Officials Impartial Arbitration Referral
Company A engineers asserted design adequacy; Company B engineers identified miscalculations and life-endangering deficiencies; the irreconcilable dispute required impartial technical arbitration rather than resolution by the designing firm's own assertion.
Company B Officials and Company A Officials
Impartial Technical Arbitration Referral Obligation for Irreconcilable Cross-Firm Safety Disputes
Both Company B officials and Company A officials were obligated to refer the irreconcilable technical safety dispute to an impartial technical engineering society or expert panel for objective resolution before authorizing production to proceed, rather than allowing Company A's unilateral self-assessment to govern a life-safety production decision.
Upon determination that the technical safety dispute between Company A and Company B engineers was irreconcilable through direct communication
Company B engineers identifying deficiencies before Company B officials notifying Company A
Company B engineers notifying employer of concerns before ethical impasse requiring refusal or withdrawal
Company B engineers notifying proper authority before withdrawal from further service on the project
Company B officials notifying Company A before Company A dismissing concerns and directing production to proceed
Comparative Case Precedent Distinguishing — Case 61-10 vs. Present Case
During the ethics board's analysis of the applicable precedent and its distinguishing features
Comparative Case Precedent Distinguishing State
The ethics board's determination that Case 61-10 (lower quality product redesign without public safety endangerment) is distinguishable from the present case (design endangering public health and safety), requiring a different and more stringent ethical obligation
Ethics board's explicit distinction of Case 61-10 on the basis that it did not involve public health and safety endangerment, and application of the more stringent Section 2(c) obligation
Invocation of Case 61-10 as potentially applicable precedent, requiring the board to assess whether its holding governs the present situation
The ethical obligations of the engineers of Company "B" are to notify their employer of possible dangers to the public safety and seek to have the design and specifications altered to make the machinery safe in their opinion; if the opinions cannot be reconciled they should propose submission of the problem to an independent and impartial body of experts: unless and until the engineers of Company "B" are satisfied that the machinery would not jeopardize the public safety they should refuse to participate in any engineering activity connected with the project.
Beyond the Board's conclusion that Company B engineers must notify their employer and seek design alterations, the graduated internal escalation process they completed is not merely a procedural formality but a substantive ethical prerequisite that both protects the engineers' professional integrity and maximizes the probability of correcting the danger before it materializes. By channeling their concern through Company B officials to Company A, the engineers created a documented record of professional dissent that distinguishes their conduct from passive acquiescence. However, the Board's conclusion leaves unaddressed a critical gap: once both the internal escalation chain and the inter-firm escalation chain have been exhausted without resolution, the engineers' obligation to protect public welfare does not terminate with refusal to participate. The same public-welfare principle that compels withdrawal also logically compels notification to an appropriate regulatory or professional authority, because withdrawal alone removes the engineers from personal complicity but does nothing to prevent the unsafe machinery from being built by others or from reaching the ultimate users who face the actual physical danger. A refusal to participate that is not accompanied by any external notification is ethically incomplete when the danger to third parties is both specific and serious.
The Board's prescription that Company B engineers should 'refuse to participate in any engineering activity connected with the project' requires a purposive rather than literal interpretation of participation scope. A narrow reading might permit Company B engineers to withdraw from direct design or fabrication work while continuing in administrative, supervisory, or quality-assurance roles on the same project, reasoning that such roles do not involve building the disputed machinery. This interpretation is ethically untenable. Any continued involvement that advances the project toward completion — whether through scheduling, materials procurement oversight, inspection sign-off, or managerial coordination — functionally enables the production of machinery the engineers believe to be dangerous. The ethical prohibition must therefore extend to all roles whose exercise would contribute, even indirectly, to the completion of the unsafe equipment. A disclaimer of personal responsibility attached to continued participation does not satisfy this obligation; genuine withdrawal requires complete disengagement from all project-connected engineering activity. The distinction between direct and indirect contribution is morally irrelevant when the foreseeable outcome of either form of participation is the same: the production of machinery that may endanger lives.
The Board's conclusion focuses exclusively on the ethical obligations of Company B engineers and is silent on the independent ethical obligations of Company A engineers once they have received a formal, documented safety challenge from qualified peer engineers at Company B. This silence is analytically significant. The principle that honest disagreement among qualified engineers does not itself constitute an ethical violation cannot be stretched to immunize Company A engineers from any obligation of response. When peer engineers at a manufacturing firm — engineers who are reviewing the plans with fresh eyes and a direct stake in safe production — formally identify specific miscalculations and potential dangers, Company A engineers acquire an independent duty to conduct and document an objective re-examination of the challenged design. Dismissing the concern by simply reaffirming the adequacy of their original work, without documented re-evaluation, fails to meet the standard of professional care owed both to the ultimate users and to the integrity of the engineering process. The fact that Company A engineers may ultimately be correct does not retroactively validate a dismissal process that was not objectively conducted. Their failure to engage substantively with the safety challenge is itself an ethical shortcoming, separate from and in addition to whatever obligations fall on Company B engineers.
The Board's recommendation that Company B engineers propose submission of the dispute to an independent and impartial body of experts raises a further question the Board does not resolve: what is the ethical status of Company B engineers' individual professional judgment if that impartial body concludes the design is safe while the engineers remain personally unconvinced? The Board's formulation — that engineers should refuse participation 'unless and until' they are satisfied the machinery would not jeopardize public safety — appears to preserve the primacy of individual professional judgment even after impartial arbitration. This position is defensible on deontological grounds: the engineer's duty to the public is personal and non-delegable, and no arbitration outcome can transfer moral responsibility for a judgment the engineer does not share. However, from a consequentialist perspective, a rule that allows individual engineers to override the conclusions of an impartial expert panel creates significant practical instability and may undermine the very arbitration mechanism the Board recommends. A more nuanced resolution would hold that the outcome of a genuinely impartial, competent, and procedurally fair arbitration creates a strong presumption of safety that shifts the burden of justification back to the dissenting engineers: they must be able to articulate specific, documented technical grounds for their continued disagreement rather than relying on unexamined intuition, and only if such grounds exist does the obligation to refuse participation persist.
The Board's conclusion that Company B engineers must accept employment loss as a potential cost of their safety refusal reflects a correct but underexamined ethical principle. The obligation to refuse participation in the production of machinery believed to be dangerous does not become conditional upon the employer's willingness to accommodate that refusal without adverse employment consequences. However, the Board's framing implicitly treats the employment-loss risk as a terminal point in the ethical analysis rather than as a factor that itself triggers additional obligations. When engineers face termination or serious professional retaliation for exercising their safety obligations, the profession as a whole — through its societies, licensing boards, and peer networks — acquires a corresponding obligation to provide support, advocacy, and, where possible, protection. The individual engineer's courage in accepting employment loss is ethically necessary but not ethically sufficient as a systemic response to the structural vulnerability that safety-dissenting engineers face. The Board's conclusion would be strengthened by acknowledging that the ethical framework surrounding safety refusal must include institutional mechanisms — such as professional society support, whistleblower protection advocacy, and peer solidarity — that make the acceptance of employment loss a genuinely viable rather than merely theoretical ethical option.
A consequentialist critique of the Board's prescribed outcome — that Company B engineers must refuse participation — reveals a structural paradox that the Board does not address. If Company B engineers withdraw from the project, Company B as a firm may still proceed with production under the direction of other engineers who either share Company A's view that the design is safe or who are less willing to accept the employment consequences of refusal. Alternatively, Company A may transfer the manufacturing contract to a different firm whose engineers raise no objection. In either scenario, the unsafe machinery is built, the ultimate users remain in danger, and the only difference is that Company B's safety-dissenting engineers are no longer personally complicit. From a pure outcome-maximization standpoint, this result is no better — and may be marginally worse — than a scenario in which Company B engineers remain on the project, continue to document their objections, and exercise whatever residual influence they retain over production quality and safety monitoring. This tension does not invalidate the Board's conclusion, because the deontological prohibition on personal participation in a known danger is independently compelling and cannot be dissolved by consequentialist reasoning alone. However, it does underscore that the ethical framework must extend beyond individual withdrawal to encompass affirmative steps — regulatory notification, professional society involvement, or public disclosure as a last resort — that actually reduce the probability of the dangerous machinery reaching its users.
In response to Q101: The Board's conclusion that Company B engineers should 'refuse to participate' does not fully discharge their broader public-protection duty. Refusal is a necessary but not sufficient ethical response when the machinery poses a genuine threat to the lives of persons in proximity to it. Once both internal escalation and inter-firm escalation have been exhausted without resolution, the public-safety stakes elevate the obligation beyond mere withdrawal. At that point, Company B engineers acquire an affirmative obligation to notify an appropriate regulatory authority or professional society, because the ultimate users and bystanders — who are the actual endangered parties — have no knowledge of the dispute and no capacity to protect themselves. The Board's prescribed refusal protects the engineers' own professional integrity and prevents their direct complicity, but it does not warn or protect the public if Company A simply proceeds to build the machinery through other means or with compliant engineers. The principle that public welfare is paramount implies an active, not merely passive, duty of protection when internal channels have demonstrably failed.
In response to Q102: A mere disclaimer of responsibility — for example, a written notation that Company B engineers object to the design but will nonetheless continue working — does not satisfy the ethical obligations identified by the Board. The Board's language requiring engineers to 'refuse to participate in any engineering activity connected with the project' contemplates genuine, complete disengagement, not a formal protest coupled with continued performance. A disclaimer without withdrawal is ethically equivalent to passive acquiescence because it still contributes the engineer's skill, labor, and professional credibility to the production of machinery believed to be dangerous. The ethical harm the Code seeks to prevent is the materialization of the safety risk, not merely the engineer's subjective sense of moral distance from it. Continued participation under a disclaimer also creates a misleading appearance to third parties — including the ultimate users — that qualified engineers reviewed and implicitly accepted the design as buildable. Therefore, genuine withdrawal from all engineering activity connected with the project is the minimum required conduct, and a disclaimer standing alone is an independent ethical failure.
In response to Q103: The engineers of Company A bear an independent ethical obligation to conduct an objective, documented re-examination of their design upon receiving a formal safety challenge from qualified peer engineers at Company B. The dismissal of that challenge without such re-examination is itself an ethical violation, regardless of whether the original design ultimately proves to be correct. The Code's requirement that engineers hold public safety paramount applies symmetrically to designing engineers and manufacturing engineers alike. When a qualified engineering team at an arm's-length firm — with no apparent motive to obstruct production — formally identifies specific miscalculations and potential dangers to human life, that notification constitutes a professional trigger requiring genuine technical engagement, not a reflexive institutional defense of prior work. Company A engineers' response that their design was 'adequate and safe' without documented re-evaluation fails this standard. Their honest disagreement may be professionally permissible as a conclusion, but the process by which they reached it — dismissal rather than re-examination — is not. This failure is compounded by the fact that the endangered parties are third-party users who had no voice in the dispute.
In response to Q104: The prohibition on participation in 'engineering activity connected with the project' should be interpreted broadly and purposively rather than narrowly and literally. The ethical purpose of the withdrawal obligation is to prevent the engineer's professional skill and judgment from contributing — directly or indirectly — to the production of machinery believed to endanger human life. Under this purposive reading, administrative, supervisory, and quality-assurance roles that support, enable, or accelerate the production process fall within the prohibition, even if they do not involve hands-on design or fabrication work. A Company B engineer who supervises the production floor, approves procurement of materials, or certifies quality milestones for the disputed machinery is contributing materially to its completion. The fact that the contribution is managerial rather than technical does not diminish its causal role in bringing the dangerous product into existence. Only roles that are genuinely severable from the disputed project — such as work on entirely unrelated products — fall outside the participation bar. The Board's reference to the Code's spirit and letter supports this expansive reading.
In response to Q201: The permissibility of honest disagreement among qualified engineers does not justify Company B engineers continuing to participate in production of machinery they believe is dangerous. These two principles operate in different domains and do not conflict in the way the question implies. The honest-disagreement principle establishes that Company A engineers do not commit an ethical violation merely by holding a contrary professional view — it is a principle about the epistemic legitimacy of differing expert conclusions. The going-along prohibition, by contrast, governs the conduct of the engineer who holds the safety concern, not the engineer whose design is challenged. Company B engineers' obligation to withdraw is triggered by their own sincere, professionally grounded belief that the machinery endangers human life — it is not contingent on Company A engineers being wrong or acting in bad faith. The existence of a genuine, defensible contrary view by Company A engineers is precisely the condition that activates the Board's recommendation for impartial arbitration, not a condition that permits Company B engineers to set aside their safety judgment and proceed.
In response to Q202: The faithful-agent duty to one's employer does not terminate abruptly upon the employer's instruction to proceed, but it is progressively displaced by the paramount public-safety duty as the engineer exhausts available internal remedies without resolution. The faithful-agent obligation is fully satisfied — and simultaneously exhausted — at the moment Company B engineers have: (1) notified their employer of the specific safety deficiencies, (2) communicated the potential consequences to persons in proximity to the machinery, and (3) proposed submission of the dispute to an impartial expert body. Once those steps are completed and the employer nonetheless directs continuation, the faithful-agent duty has been fully performed and can no longer serve as justification for further participation. At that precise moment, the paramount public-safety duty takes exclusive precedence. The employer's instruction to proceed does not create a new faithful-agent obligation to comply; rather, it creates the condition under which the public-safety duty becomes the sole operative ethical standard governing the engineer's conduct.
In response to Q203: The decision to proceed with production is not a legitimate managerial business judgment that engineers must respect when the subject matter involves a credible risk to human life. The business-decision boundary principle — which generally requires engineers to defer to employer decisions on matters of commercial judgment — is categorically inapplicable when the decision in question concerns whether to build machinery that qualified engineers believe may endanger the lives of persons in proximity to it. The distinction drawn in BER Case 61-10 is instructive: deference to business decisions is appropriate where the engineer's concern is with project viability, commercial risk, or technical suboptimality, but not where the concern is with public safety. Company B officials' instruction to proceed is therefore not a business decision in the legally and ethically relevant sense — it is an instruction to produce a product that engineers on the production side believe to be dangerous. Such an instruction falls outside the domain of permissible managerial authority over professional engineers, and compliance with it would constitute an abrogation of the engineers' fundamental professional responsibility.
In response to Q204: Once all internal escalation channels are exhausted and the employer still directs continuation, the obligation to accept employment loss as the cost of safety refusal does not arise immediately as the very next step. The Board's conclusion identifies an intermediate step — proposing submission of the dispute to an impartial expert body — that must be attempted before withdrawal becomes mandatory. This intermediate step is not merely procedural courtesy; it serves the substantive purpose of providing an objective resolution mechanism that could either confirm the safety concern or resolve it, thereby protecting both the public and the engineers' professional standing. Only after this impartial-referral option has been proposed and either rejected or exhausted does the binary choice — insist on design correction or withdraw — become the operative framework. At that point, if the employer still directs continuation, the obligation to withdraw and accept the employment consequences arises fully and without further intermediate steps. The graduated structure of this escalation reflects the Code's recognition that precipitous action should be avoided when orderly professional remedies remain available.
In response to Q301: From a deontological perspective, Company B engineers do not fully discharge their categorical duty to protect public safety merely by reporting the deficiencies to their employer and through their employer to Company A. Reporting is a necessary condition of duty fulfillment, but it is not sufficient. The categorical duty — grounded in the unconditional obligation to prevent foreseeable harm to persons — requires that the engineer not become an instrument of that harm, regardless of institutional pressure or economic consequence. As long as Company B engineers continue to participate in the production of machinery they believe will endanger human life, they remain causally and morally implicated in the potential harm, even if they have registered their objection. The duty remains unfulfilled until they actively refuse to participate, because only refusal breaks the causal chain between their professional conduct and the anticipated harm. Reporting without refusal is, from a Kantian standpoint, treating the public merely as a means — their safety is acknowledged but not actually protected — which violates the categorical imperative's demand that persons never be treated merely instrumentally.
In response to Q302: From a consequentialist perspective, the Board's prescribed outcome — requiring Company B engineers to refuse participation unless safety is assured — does not straightforwardly maximize public welfare in all scenarios, and the question identifies a genuine consequentialist tension. If Company B engineers withdraw and Company A simply engages a different manufacturer whose engineers raise no safety objections, the net result may be that the dangerous machinery is built without any internal dissent at all, leaving the public worse off than if Company B engineers had remained involved and continued to advocate for design corrections from within. However, this consequentialist concern does not override the Board's conclusion for two reasons. First, the consequentialist calculus must account for the systemic effects of the rule, not just the individual case: a professional norm that permits engineers to continue participating in unsafe projects whenever withdrawal might lead to worse outcomes would systematically erode the safety-enforcement function of professional ethics. Second, the consequentialist concern is precisely what motivates the Board's intermediate step of proposing impartial arbitration — a mechanism designed to resolve the dispute rather than simply exit it, thereby maximizing the probability of a safe outcome. Withdrawal combined with regulatory notification, rather than withdrawal alone, is the consequentialist-optimal response.
In response to Q303: From a virtue ethics perspective, the character of professional integrity — understood as the integrated disposition to act in accordance with one's professional role's highest purposes — demands more than withdrawal from the project. Withdrawal is the expression of the virtue of integrity in its negative dimension: the refusal to be complicit in harm. But the virtue of professional courage, and the related virtue of civic responsibility, demand a positive dimension as well: proactive escalation of the safety concern to a regulatory authority or professional body when internal and inter-firm channels have failed. A virtuous engineer does not merely step aside and allow the harm to proceed through other agents; the virtuous engineer takes affirmative steps to prevent the harm from materializing at all. Treating withdrawal as a sufficient expression of professional virtue reflects an impoverished conception of the engineer's role in society — one that prioritizes personal moral cleanliness over the substantive protection of persons who are endangered. The virtue of practical wisdom, or phronesis, would counsel the engineer to recognize that the situation calls for escalation, not merely exit.
In response to Q304: From a deontological perspective, Company A engineers bear an independent duty to objectively re-examine their design upon receiving a formal safety challenge from qualified peer engineers at Company B, and their dismissal of that concern without documented re-evaluation constitutes a violation of their professional obligations regardless of whether their original design was ultimately correct. The deontological basis for this duty is the categorical obligation to treat the safety of persons who will be exposed to the machinery as an end in itself, not merely as a factor to be weighed against institutional convenience or professional pride. A formal safety challenge from qualified engineers at an arm's-length firm is not a mere opinion to be noted and disregarded; it is a professional trigger that activates the duty of due care. The correctness of the original design is irrelevant to the question of whether the duty to re-examine was fulfilled — a duty of process cannot be discharged by a favorable outcome that was reached without following the required process. Company A engineers' failure to conduct and document an objective re-examination is therefore an independent ethical violation, separate from and additional to any question about the substantive adequacy of their design.
In response to Q401: If Company B engineers had identified the safety deficiencies only after construction had already begun rather than during initial plan review, the Board's prescribed ethical obligations would remain substantively identical, but the practical urgency of their execution would be significantly heightened. The imminence of completion and the sunk costs of production do not alter the ethical calculus because the relevant moral consideration is the anticipated harm to persons in proximity to the machinery, not the economic loss to the parties from stopping production. Sunk costs are ethically irrelevant to a safety determination — the fact that resources have already been expended does not reduce the danger of the finished product. However, the imminence of completion does affect the urgency of escalation: if the machinery is near completion, the intermediate step of proposing impartial arbitration must be pursued with greater speed, and the case for immediate regulatory notification becomes stronger because the window for preventing harm through internal resolution is narrowing. The obligation to refuse further participation arises at the moment the safety concern is identified, regardless of the stage of production.
In response to Q402: If an impartial expert body concluded the design was safe while Company B engineers still believed it was dangerous, the Board's conclusion that Company B engineers must refuse participation until personally satisfied would be significantly qualified, though not entirely eliminated. The impartial arbitration mechanism is designed precisely to resolve honest disagreements between qualified engineers by reference to an objective, disinterested professional judgment. If Company B engineers proposed the arbitration, accepted its legitimacy as a process, and the body concluded the design was safe, it would be professionally untenable for Company B engineers to treat their own unrevised judgment as categorically superior to that of the impartial panel. At that point, the honest-disagreement principle would counsel deference to the impartial outcome, and continued refusal to participate would require Company B engineers to articulate specific, documented technical grounds on which the panel's conclusion was erroneous — not merely a reassertion of their original view. However, if Company B engineers identified specific methodological flaws in the panel's analysis, their professional obligation to protect public safety would still permit — and perhaps require — escalation to a regulatory authority, even after the arbitration outcome.
In response to Q403: If Company B were a subsidiary or division of Company A, the collapse of the inter-firm escalation chain into a single organizational hierarchy would not eliminate the ethical obligations of Company B engineers, but it would significantly alter the practical pathways available to discharge them. Within a single organizational hierarchy, the escalation chain would extend upward through shared management, potentially reaching a common authority capable of resolving the dispute. However, the self-serving-dismissal constraint — which holds that a designing firm's own assurance of safety is not binding on the engineers who identified the deficiency — would apply with even greater force within a unified organization, because the institutional pressure to conform would be more direct and the independence of the reviewing engineers more compromised. The Board's recommendation to seek impartial external arbitration would remain available and would become even more important as a practical remedy, because the internal hierarchy's conflict of interest would be more acute. In this scenario, the obligation to escalate to an external regulatory authority or professional body would arise earlier in the escalation sequence, precisely because the internal channels are structurally compromised by the organizational relationship.
The tension between the Faithful Agent Notification Obligation and the Public Welfare Paramount principle was resolved through a sequential, threshold-triggered model rather than a simultaneous balancing test. Company B engineers were required to honor their faithful-agent duty first—by notifying their employer fully and accurately of the safety deficiencies and their potential consequences—but that duty was treated as exhaustible: once the internal escalation chain was completed and rejected at every level, including the inter-firm referral to Company A, the faithful-agent obligation was fully discharged and ceased to compete with the public-safety duty. At that precise moment, the Public Welfare Paramount principle assumed exclusive normative authority, and no further employer instruction could revive the faithful-agent obligation as a counterweight. The case thus teaches that these two principles are not permanently in tension; they operate in sequence, with the faithful-agent duty functioning as a procedural prerequisite that, once satisfied, yields entirely to the paramount public-safety duty.
The principle that honest disagreement among qualified engineers is permissible was carefully bounded so that it could not be weaponized to justify Company B engineers' continued participation in a project they believed to be dangerous. The Board implicitly distinguished between the epistemic permissibility of Company A engineers holding a contrary view—which does not constitute an independent ethical violation on their part—and the practical permissibility of Company B engineers relying on that contrary view as a license to proceed. The resolution was asymmetric: Company A engineers' honest disagreement was treated as professionally defensible and not itself unethical, but it was simultaneously treated as insufficient to override Company B engineers' own independent professional judgment about safety. This asymmetry reflects a deeper principle that each engineer bears a non-delegable, first-person duty of safety assurance that cannot be discharged by deferring to a peer's contrary conclusion, however sincerely held. The Going-Along Prohibition thus operates as a constraint on Company B engineers regardless of the good faith of Company A engineers, and the appropriate resolution of the honest disagreement is not continued participation but referral to an impartial expert body.
The case establishes that the Business Decision Boundary principle—which ordinarily permits engineers to defer to managerial judgment on matters of commercial policy—is categorically inapplicable once a decision crosses into the domain of public physical safety. The instruction by Company B officials to proceed with production was formally structured as a business directive, but the Board's reasoning implicitly treats it as having forfeited its character as a legitimate business decision the moment it required engineers to manufacture equipment they believed would endanger human lives. This categorical exclusion is not a matter of degree or proportionality; it does not depend on how serious the safety risk is or how confident the engineers are in their assessment. Rather, the Production Employer Safety Override Non-Authority principle operates as a bright-line rule: no managerial authority within either company possesses the competence to override an engineer's safety-based refusal to participate, and the Employment Loss Acceptance principle confirms that the cost of honoring this rule—including termination—falls on the engineer as an accepted professional burden rather than a cognizable ethical excuse for compliance. Together, these principles teach that the engineer's public-safety role is constitutively incompatible with the role of obedient employee when the two roles conflict on a safety question, and that the ethics code resolves this incompatibility entirely in favor of the public-safety role.
NSPE Board of Ethical Review / Professional consensus
Engineers of Company B and Company A when their technical assessments of the design's adequacy and safety diverged
Governs the situation where Company A's engineers contradict Company B's engineers' safety findings — establishing norms for how conflicting professional assessments of the same design should be handled and what obligations arise when one expert's safety findings are disputed by another
Cross-Firm Honest Safety Disagreement Impartial Referral Recommendation
The BER identified an apparent honest difference of opinion between Company A engineers (asserting design adequacy) and Company B engineers (identifying miscalculations and deficiencies), and recommended referral to an impartial technical body as the appropriate resolution mechanism.
Cross-Firm Honest Safety Disagreement Impartial Expert Referral Obligation
Where Company A engineers and Company B engineers reached an honest, irreconcilable disagreement about the safety of the machinery design, both parties were obligated to refer the dispute to an impartial body of experts — such as a technical engineering society in the relevant field — for an independent determination, rather than allowing Company A's unilateral assertion of adequacy to govern production decisions.
Where, as in this case, there is an apparent honest difference of opinion as to the safety features of the machinery between the engineers of Company 'A' and the engineers of Company 'B' it would be appropriate for the question to be referred to an impartial body of experts, such as a technical engineering society in the particular field of practice, for an independent determination
Upon determination that the technical safety disagreement was irreconcilable between the two firms' engineers
Cross-Firm Safety Dispute Impartial Technical Resolution Invoked
Unresolved technical safety dispute between designing firm and production firm engineers
Honest Disagreement Among Qualified Engineers Permissibility Principle
The irreconcilable technical disagreement between Company A engineers (asserting design adequacy) and Company B engineers (identifying miscalculations and life-safety deficiencies) required referral to an impartial technical engineering society panel rather than resolution by Company A's unilateral assertion of design authority.
When two firms' engineers reach opposite safety conclusions and the designing firm simply asserts its own adequacy, the appropriate resolution mechanism is an independent impartial technical body — not contractual hierarchy or the designing firm's self-assessment.
Cross-Firm Safety Dispute Impartial Technical Resolution Principle
Impartial technical resolution is required precisely because honest disagreement between qualified engineers cannot be resolved by one party's authority alone when public safety is at stake.
Should Company B engineers refuse all participation in the project and propose impartial arbitration, comply with their employer's instruction to proceed while formally disclaiming responsibility, or continue participating while escalating concerns to a regulatory authority?
Company B engineers have identified specific miscalculations and safety deficiencies in Company A's plans, reported them internally and through their employer to Company A, received Company A's dismissal of those concerns, and now face their employer's instruction to proceed with production. The core question is what course of action they must take to fulfill their paramount public-safety obligation.
Formally propose submission of the safety dispute to an independent technical engineering society or expert panel for objective resolution, and simultaneously refuse to participate in any engineering activity connected with the project — including administrative, supervisory, or quality-assurance roles — until either the design is corrected to their satisfaction or the impartial body confirms safety.
Comply with the employer's instruction to proceed with production while submitting a formal written disclaimer documenting the engineers' objections and disavowing personal responsibility for the identified deficiencies, on the theory that the honest disagreement between qualified engineers at Company A and Company B makes continued participation professionally defensible.
Remain on the project to retain influence over production quality and safety monitoring while simultaneously notifying an appropriate regulatory authority of the identified dangers, on the theory that withdrawal alone removes personal complicity without protecting the public, and that internal presence maximizes the probability of catching and correcting deficiencies before the machinery reaches users.
Should Company B engineers refuse to participate in any engineering activity connected with the project until they are personally satisfied the machinery is safe, or should they continue participating under some form of qualified engagement after exhausting internal escalation?
Company B Engineers: Production Participation Refusal and Sustained Safety Opinion Persistence
Completely disengage from all engineering activity connected with the project — including design, fabrication, supervisory, administrative, and quality-assurance roles — until personally satisfied the machinery is safe, accepting employment loss as the professional cost of this refusal.
Remain on the project in a documented capacity while filing a formal written disclaimer of personal responsibility for the disputed design, reasoning that the concern has been registered and the employer's business judgment now governs the production decision.
Withdraw from hands-on design and fabrication work directly connected to the disputed machinery while continuing in administrative, scheduling, or quality-assurance roles for unrelated project components, on the grounds that indirect roles do not constitute participation in building the unsafe equipment.
Should Company B engineers, after exhausting internal and inter-firm escalation channels without resolution, limit their response to refusing project participation, or must they also notify an appropriate external regulatory authority or professional society to discharge their full public-protection duty?
Company B Engineers: Safety Consequence Communication, Graduated Escalation Sequence, and Threshold for External Regulatory Notification
After exhausting internal and inter-firm escalation channels and proposing impartial arbitration without resolution, both refuse all project-connected participation and notify an appropriate regulatory authority or professional society, on the grounds that withdrawal alone leaves the ultimate users unprotected and the public-welfare duty demands affirmative action beyond personal non-complicity.
Refuse all project-connected participation as the terminal ethical step, without notifying external regulatory or professional bodies, on the grounds that the graduated escalation sequence — internal reporting, inter-firm escalation, and impartial arbitration proposal — fully discharges the engineers' personal public-protection duty and that external notification before arbitration is exhausted would be premature.
Treat the proposal of submission to an impartial expert body as the next required intermediate step before either refusing participation or escalating externally, reasoning that precipitous withdrawal or regulatory notification is ethically premature while an orderly professional remedy — impartial arbitration — remains available and has not yet been formally rejected by both parties.
Should Company A engineers, upon receiving a formal safety challenge from qualified peer engineers at Company B identifying specific miscalculations and potential dangers, conduct and document an objective re-examination of their design, or may they reaffirm the adequacy of their original work without a documented independent review?
Company A Engineers: Independent Duty of Objective Re-examination Upon Receiving Formal Peer Safety Challenge
Treat the formal peer safety challenge as a professional trigger requiring a genuine, independently documented technical re-evaluation of the disputed design elements, separate from and in addition to reaffirming the original work, with findings recorded regardless of whether the conclusion changes.
Respond to the peer safety challenge by reaffirming the adequacy and safety of the original design based on the designing engineers' superior knowledge of their own work, treating the challenge as a professionally permissible honest disagreement that does not independently require a new documented review process.
Agree to submit the disputed design to the impartial expert body proposed by Company B engineers, treating that external referral as the appropriate and sufficient mechanism for objective re-examination rather than conducting a separate internal documented review, on the grounds that an independent panel provides greater objectivity than a self-conducted re-evaluation.
Should Company A engineers conduct a documented objective re-examination of their design in response to Company B's formal safety challenge and jointly refer the irreconcilable dispute to an impartial technical body, or may they rely on their own prior assessment as a sufficient response to the peer safety notification?
Company A engineers have received a formal, documented notification from Company B engineers identifying specific miscalculations and potential dangers in Company A's plans and specifications. Company A engineers responded by asserting that the design is adequate and safe without documented re-examination. The question is whether this dismissal satisfies Company A's professional obligations or constitutes an independent ethical violation, and whether both firms are obligated to refer the irreconcilable dispute to an impartial expert body.
Conduct and document a genuine, objective technical re-examination of the specific miscalculations and deficiencies identified by Company B engineers, and jointly with Company B refer the irreconcilable dispute to an independent technical engineering society or expert panel for objective resolution before authorizing production to proceed.
Rely on the original design review and the professional judgment of Company A's engineers — who prepared, analyzed, and sealed the plans — as a sufficient response to Company B's notification, on the theory that the designing firm's engineers are the most qualified to assess their own work and that honest disagreement among qualified engineers does not require formal re-examination or external arbitration.
Conduct an internal documented re-examination of the challenged design elements and communicate the findings to Company B, but decline to refer the dispute to an external impartial body on the grounds that the designing firm's own objective internal review — if genuinely conducted and documented — satisfies the process-integrity obligation without requiring submission to a third party.
Once Company B engineers have refused production participation and exhausted all internal and inter-firm escalation channels, should they also notify a regulatory authority or professional society of the identified dangers, or does complete withdrawal from all project-connected engineering activity fully discharge their public-safety obligation?
After Company B engineers have refused to participate in production and their employer has overridden that refusal, the question arises whether genuine withdrawal from all project-connected engineering activity — including administrative, supervisory, and quality-assurance roles — fully discharges their ethical obligations, or whether the paramount public-safety duty additionally requires affirmative escalation to a regulatory authority or professional body to protect third-party users who have no knowledge of the dispute.
Effect a genuine, complete cessation of all engineering activity connected with the project — including administrative, supervisory, and quality-assurance roles — and additionally notify an appropriate regulatory authority or professional engineering society of the identified dangers, recognizing that withdrawal alone protects only the engineers' own professional integrity while leaving third-party users unprotected if production proceeds through other means.
Refuse to participate in direct design, fabrication, or production activities connected with the disputed machinery while continuing in administrative, supervisory, or quality-assurance roles on the project, on the theory that such roles are sufficiently remote from the unsafe design to be permissible and that maintaining a presence on the project preserves residual influence over production quality and safety monitoring.
Effect a genuine, complete cessation of all engineering activity connected with the project across all roles, but refrain from notifying regulatory authorities or professional societies on the grounds that the dispute constitutes an honest, unresolved technical disagreement among qualified engineers rather than a clear and demonstrable defect, and that the graduated-escalation principle requires the impartial-arbitration mechanism to be fully exhausted before external regulatory escalation is warranted.
Should Company B engineers immediately refuse to participate in all project activity once their employer directs them to proceed, or must they first propose submission of the dispute to an impartial expert body before withdrawal becomes mandatory?
Company B Engineers: Graduated Escalation Sequence and Project Withdrawal Obligation
Formally propose submission of the disputed design to an independent and impartial body of experts as the next required step, and only refuse all project participation if that proposal is rejected or the arbitration fails to resolve the safety concern to the engineers' satisfaction.
Treat the employer's directive to proceed — issued after internal and inter-firm escalation have both been rejected — as the trigger for immediate, complete withdrawal from all engineering activity connected with the project, without waiting to propose or pursue impartial arbitration.
Remain on the project while filing a written disclaimer documenting the engineers' safety objections, on the grounds that continued involvement preserves residual influence over production quality and that the employer's directive, having been formally contested, shifts moral responsibility to management.
Once Company B engineers have exhausted all escalation channels and refused to participate in production, should they also notify an appropriate regulatory authority or professional society, or does withdrawal from the project fully discharge their public-safety obligation?
Company B Engineers: Employment Loss Acceptance and Post-Withdrawal External Notification Obligation
Refuse all further participation in the project and affirmatively notify an appropriate regulatory authority or professional society of the specific safety deficiencies, on the grounds that withdrawal alone leaves ultimate users unprotected and that the public-welfare duty is active, not merely passive.
Refuse all further participation in the project but treat withdrawal as fully discharging the public-safety obligation, on the grounds that the engineers have exhausted all available professional channels, the honest disagreement between qualified engineers does not yet meet the threshold for regulatory escalation, and further action risks unwarranted reputational harm to all parties.
Refuse further participation and report the safety dispute to the relevant professional engineering society for peer review and guidance, treating this as a middle path that activates professional oversight without the formality and adversarial character of direct regulatory notification while the substantive safety question remains contested between qualified engineers.
Should Company B engineers treat their employer's directive to proceed with production as a legitimate business decision entitled to professional deference, or must they treat it as categorically outside the domain of permissible managerial authority because it requires them to manufacture equipment they believe will endanger human life?
Public Safety vs. Business Decision Boundary: Whether Company B Officials' Production Directive Falls Within Permissible Managerial Authority
Treat the directive to proceed as categorically outside the domain of permissible managerial authority because it requires manufacturing equipment believed to endanger human life, and refuse all participation regardless of adverse employment consequences, on the grounds that the public-safety dimension removes the decision from the business-judgment domain entirely.
Treat the employer's directive as a provisionally legitimate business decision to rely on Company A's design expertise, and continue participation while the proposed impartial arbitration is pending, on the grounds that an unresolved technical disagreement between qualified engineers does not yet meet the threshold for categorically overriding managerial authority.
Comply with the employer's directive while formally documenting the safety objection in writing and placing the moral and legal responsibility on management, treating the directive as a business decision that the engineers have contested through all available channels and that now falls within the employer's residual authority to make at their own professional and legal risk.
Once Company B's employer has directed production to proceed despite exhausted internal and inter-firm escalation, must Company B engineers completely withdraw from all engineering activity connected with the project, or may they continue in limited roles (administrative, supervisory, QA) while formally disclaiming responsibility for the unsafe design?
Company B Engineers: Scope and Completeness of Withdrawal Obligation After Employer Override
Refuse all engineering activity connected with the project — including direct fabrication, supervisory, administrative, and QA roles — accepting the employment consequences of complete disengagement as the required professional burden.
Submit a written disclaimer documenting objection to the design's safety while continuing in administrative or QA roles that do not involve direct fabrication of the disputed machinery, on the grounds that documented dissent satisfies the ethical obligation without requiring full withdrawal.
Withdraw from all design, fabrication, and supervisory roles directly connected to the disputed machinery while continuing work on genuinely unrelated products or administrative functions with no causal link to the unsafe equipment's completion.
After withdrawing from the project, must Company B engineers also notify an appropriate regulatory authority or professional society of the safety danger, or does refusal to participate itself fully discharge their public-safety obligation?
Company B Engineers: Whether Refusal to Participate Fully Discharges the Public Safety Duty or Requires Additional External Escalation
Refuse all project participation and additionally notify an appropriate regulatory authority or professional society of the specific safety deficiencies, on the grounds that withdrawal alone leaves the ultimate users unprotected if Company A proceeds through other means.
Refuse all project participation and treat that refusal as fully discharging the public-safety obligation, on the grounds that the graduated escalation sequence — internal notification, inter-firm referral, impartial arbitration proposal, withdrawal — is the complete ethical prescription and external regulatory notification is not required absent imminent, certain danger.
Refuse all project participation and refer the matter to the relevant professional engineering society for an ethics opinion or peer review, treating society involvement as an intermediate step between withdrawal and direct regulatory notification that preserves the documented record of dissent without the finality of a regulatory complaint.
After internal escalation is exhausted and Company A has dismissed the safety concern, must Company B engineers propose submission of the dispute to an impartial expert body before withdrawing from the project, or may they proceed directly to withdrawal and regulatory notification without first attempting impartial arbitration?
Company B Engineers: Sequential Escalation Sequence — When Does the Faithful-Agent Duty Yield to the Public-Safety Duty, and Is Impartial Arbitration a Required Intermediate Step Before Withdrawal?
Before withdrawing from the project, formally propose submission of the safety dispute to an independent and impartial body of experts, treating this step as a required intermediate in the graduated escalation sequence that must be attempted and either accepted or rejected before the withdrawal obligation becomes fully operative.
Treat the faithful-agent duty as fully discharged upon inter-firm escalation to Company A and proceed directly to withdrawal and regulatory notification, on the grounds that Company A's dismissal of the safety concern demonstrates that further intermediate steps would be futile and that the public safety threat demands immediate action.
Simultaneously propose impartial arbitration and suspend participation in production activity pending the arbitration outcome, treating suspension as a provisional form of withdrawal that protects against personal complicity while preserving the possibility of resolution through the impartial-referral mechanism.
Designing Firm Self-Serving Safety Assurance Non-Binding — Company B Engineers and Officials
Company A replied that its engineers felt the design was adequate and safe; Company B officials accepted this assurance and instructed engineers to proceed — this acceptance was ethically impermissible.
Company B engineers and Company B officials
Designing Firm Self-Serving Safety Assurance Non-Binding on Executing Engineer Constraint
Company A's unilateral assurance that its plans and specifications were adequate and safe did not constitute a sufficient basis for Company B engineers or officials to proceed with production — the self-serving dismissal from the party whose work was under scrutiny could not discharge Company B engineers' independent professional obligation to ensure the equipment would not endanger lives.
Do No Harm Obligation Applied to Company A Design Engineers
Preparation and defense of deficient plans and specifications for life-safety-critical machinery
Company A engineers, having prepared plans and specifications containing miscalculations and technical deficiencies that could endanger lives, and then dismissing Company B engineers' safety concerns without independent review, failed their obligation to minimize negative consequences of their engineering decisions on third-party users and bystanders.
The do no harm obligation extends beyond the initial design act to the response to identified safety concerns; dismissing safety objections without independent review perpetuates the potential harm and compounds the original design failure.
Do No Harm Obligation in Professional Engineering Services
Honest disagreement does not excuse dismissing safety concerns without independent review when the consequence of being wrong is life endangerment; do no harm requires at minimum engaging seriously with the identified deficiencies.
Employer Directive to Proceed (Action 7) → Professional Ethics Conflict Emergence (Event 5)
Employment Loss Acceptance Applied to Company B Engineers' Refusal
Company B engineers facing potential employment loss for refusing to proceed with production of machinery they believed unsafe
The Board explicitly acknowledged that Company B engineers' refusal to comply with their employer's instruction to proceed with production might lead to loss of employment, but held that this consideration is subordinate to the requirements of the ethics code — affirming that employment security cannot override the public safety obligation.
The principle applies not only to external whistleblowing but to any form of safety-based non-compliance with employer instructions, including refusal to perform assigned production work.
Employment Loss Acceptance as Cost of Public Safety Whistleblowing
The Board unequivocally held that employment loss risk is subordinate to the ethics code's requirements; no exception is recognized for severe personal hardship.
Employment Loss Acceptance Applied to Company B Engineers Refusing Production
Risk of employment termination or retaliation for refusing to proceed with production
Company B engineers who refused to proceed with production of life-endangering equipment — against both Company A's directive and their own employer's instruction — faced foreseeable employment consequences, but this cost does not diminish or excuse their ethical obligation to refuse and escalate.
The personal professional cost of refusing employer instructions on safety grounds is foreseeable and does not constitute an ethical excuse; permitting safety obligations to be compromised by fear of employment loss causes grave damage to the engineering profession.
Employment security considerations are subordinated to the public safety obligation when life endangerment is at stake; the cost of whistleblowing must be accepted.
Employment Situation Safety Abrogation Prohibition — Company B Engineers Employer Override
Company B officials instructed engineers to proceed despite unresolved safety concerns; engineers faced employment pressure to comply with the instruction.
Employment Situation Safety Abrogation Prohibition Constraint
Company B engineers were prohibited from bowing to their employer's instruction to proceed with production when they believed great dangers to public safety were present — acquiescing to employment pressure in such circumstances constituted an abrogation of their most fundamental professional responsibility.
NSPE Code of Ethics, Section II.1; Section II.2.a
Upon receipt of Company B officials' instruction to proceed with production
Employment Termination Threat Safety Escalation Non-Deterrence — Company B Engineers
Company B officials instructed engineers to proceed, creating implicit employment pressure; engineers' safety escalation obligations were not discharged by this pressure.
Employment Termination Threat Safety Escalation Non-Deterrence Constraint
The implicit or explicit threat of employment consequences arising from Company B officials' instruction to proceed did not constitute a legitimate constraint on Company B engineers' obligation to continue escalating the public safety hazard — the paramount duty to public safety superseded employment self-preservation.
NSPE Code of Ethics, Section II.1; Section II.2
might endanger the lives of persons in proximity to it
Engineers of Company B when deciding how to respond to the instruction to proceed
Provides a structured decision framework for Company B's engineers to evaluate whether they are ethically permitted or obligated to refuse to proceed with building equipment they believe may endanger lives, distinguishing permissible from obligatory conscientious objection
Engineer Employer Loyalty vs. Professional Judgment Standard
Engineers of Company B when their employer instructed them to proceed despite their professional safety findings
Addresses the tension between Company B engineers' duty of loyalty to their employer and their independent professional judgment that the equipment is unsafe — including the limits of employer authority to override professional engineering assessments
Engineer Public Safety Escalation Standard
Engineers of Company B after internal channels failed to resolve the safety concern
Defines the duty of Company B's engineers to escalate public safety concerns beyond their employer and Company A when both have dismissed the identified danger to persons in proximity to the equipment
Engineer Safety Recommendation Rejection Standard
Engineers of Company B upon receiving instruction to proceed despite identified miscalculations and technical deficiencies
Governs the obligations of Company B's engineers after Company A rejected their safety concerns and Company B's officials instructed them to proceed — including duties to document, advise of risks, and determine whether escalation is required
Engineer Pressure Resistance Applied to Company B Employment Threat
Company B engineers facing employer instruction to proceed with production despite unresolved safety concerns
Company B engineers were required to resist their employer's organizational pressure — including the threat of employment loss — and maintain their refusal to proceed with production of machinery they believed unsafe, because the ethics code's requirements are not subordinated by organizational demands however severe.
Employment threat is a form of organizational pressure that does not constitute ethical justification for compliance with an instruction to participate in unsafe engineering operations.
Engineer Pressure Resistance and Ethical Non-Subordination to Organizational Demands
The Board explicitly held that employment loss risk is subordinate to the requirements of the code; pressure resistance is required even at severe personal cost.
Engineer Pressure Resistance Applied to Company B Engineers Under Dual Employer-Client Pressure
Dual pressure from Company A directive and Company B employer instruction to proceed with production
Company B engineers faced compounded organizational pressure from both Company A (asserting design adequacy and directing production) and their own Company B officials (instructing them to proceed); neither source of pressure constitutes ethical justification for proceeding with production of life-endangering equipment.
The compounding of organizational pressures — from the designing firm and from the production employer — does not diminish the engineers' professional obligation; the existence of multiple sources of pressure makes resistance more difficult but not less ethically required.
Professional obligations are not subordinated by organizational convenience or the convergence of multiple institutional pressures; Company B engineers must resist both sources of pressure when public safety is genuinely at stake.
Ethics Code Expansive Interpretation Applied to Production Participation
Scope of Section 2(c) prohibition as applied to production-phase engineers who did not prepare or seal the unsafe plans
Literal textual compliance as safe harbor for engineers
The Board rejected a literal reading of Section 2(c) that would have permitted Company B engineers to proceed with production merely because they were not required to sign or seal the plans, instead reading the provision expansively to prohibit participation in any engineering operations that endanger public health and safety.
The canon of expansive interpretation requires reading 'sign or seal plans and/or specifications' as capturing the full protective purpose of the provision — prohibiting all forms of engineering participation in unsafe operations — not merely the literal act of sealing.
Ethics Code Expansive Interpretation Canon
Purposive reading prevailed over literal reading; the protective purpose of the code provision was held to extend to all forms of participation in unsafe engineering operations.
Executing Firm Engineer Unsafe Design Production Participation Bar — Company B Engineers
Company B engineers identified safety deficiencies in Company A's plans; Company A dismissed the concerns; Company B officials instructed continuation; the participation bar remained in effect.
Executing Firm Engineer Unsafe Design Production Participation Bar Constraint
Company B engineers were barred from participating in production of the machinery designed by Company A after identifying miscalculations and technical deficiencies that might endanger the lives of persons in proximity to the equipment — this bar applied regardless of Company A's self-serving assurance of adequacy and Company B officials' instruction to proceed.
NSPE Code of Ethics, Section II.2.c (prohibition on signing/sealing unsafe plans); Section II.1 (public safety paramount)
the engineers of Company 'B' in reviewing the plans and specifications came to the conclusion that they included certain miscalculations and technical deficiencies of a nature that the final product might be unsuitable for the purposes of the ultimate users, and that the equipment, if built according to the original plans and specifications, might endanger the lives of persons in proximity to it
From identification of safety deficiencies through resolution of the safety dispute
Faithful Agent Notification Obligation Fulfilled by Company B Engineers
Company B employer notification of safety concerns in Company A's plans and specifications
Company B engineers fulfilled their faithful agent obligation by notifying their employer that they did not believe the project would be successful as designed by Company A's engineers, and by pointing out the consequences to be expected from proceeding under the original plans and specifications.
The faithful agent notification obligation here encompasses not just technical deliverables but the overall viability and safety of the project the employer has contracted to produce.
Faithful Agent Notification Obligation for Project Success Risk
Notification was deemed sufficient to fulfill the faithful agent obligation; the harder question was whether refusal to proceed was also required.
Going-Along Prohibition Applied to Company B Engineers After Employer Override
Decision whether to proceed with production after employer instruction overriding safety objections
After Company B officials instructed engineers to proceed following Company A's dismissal of safety concerns, Company B engineers faced the prohibition against passively going along with production despite their unresolved, genuine safety concerns about life endangerment.
Merely having raised the concern to officials does not discharge the obligation; passive continuation in the face of a known, unresolved life-safety risk constitutes independent ethical non-compliance regardless of the employer instruction received.
Going-Along Prohibition When Safety Concerns Are Real
The going-along prohibition requires Company B engineers to take further action — insistence, refusal, or external escalation — rather than treating the employer's instruction as ethical resolution.
Going-Along Without Dissent Safety Violation — Company B Engineers Silent Continuation Prohibition
Company B engineers identified safety deficiencies; escalated through Company B management to Company A; Company A dismissed concerns; Company B officials ordered continuation.
Going-Along Without Dissent Safety Violation Independent Ethical Prohibition Constraint
Company B engineers were prohibited from silently proceeding with production of machinery they believed to be unsafe after their employer instructed continuation — going along without dissent, insistence, or withdrawal constituted an independent ethical violation.
NSPE Code of Ethics; BER Case 84-5 going-along precedent
Graduated Escalation Calibrated to Danger Imminence — Company B Engineers Manufacturing Safety
Company B engineers escalated through their employer to Company A; after both dismissed the concerns, the severity of the danger (potential endangerment of lives) required escalation to external authorities.
Graduated Escalation Calibrated to Danger Imminence and Employment Context Constraint
Company B engineers were constrained to calibrate their escalation response to the severity and imminence of the identified danger — the potential endangerment of lives of persons in proximity to the equipment required a proportionate escalation beyond internal notification, including external authority notification after internal channels were exhausted.
NSPE Code of Ethics, Section II.2; BER precedent on graduated escalation
From identification of safety deficiencies through exhaustion of all escalation channels
The engineers of Company 'B' called the matter to the attention of appropriate officials of their employer who, in turn, advised Company 'A'
Graduated Internal Escalation Completed by Company B Engineers
Internal escalation sequence from Company B engineers to Company B officials to Company A
Multi-Authority Escalation Obligation for Unresolved Public Safety Threats
Company B engineers appropriately completed the internal escalation sequence by notifying their own officials, who then relayed concerns to Company A — having exhausted internal channels without resolution, the principle now supports transition to external escalation.
The internal escalation obligation has been fulfilled; the failure of internal mechanisms — Company A's dismissal and Company B officials' instruction to proceed — now triggers the obligation to consider external reporting to appropriate authorities.
Graduated Internal Escalation Before External Reporting Obligation
Completed internal escalation without resolution activates the external reporting obligation; the graduated escalation principle supports rather than forecloses external notification at this stage.
Graduated Internal Escalation Exhaustion — Company B Engineers Before External Reporting
Company B engineers called the matter to the attention of appropriate officials of their employer, who advised Company A — completing the internal escalation chain before external reporting became appropriate.
Graduated Internal Escalation Exhaustion Before External Reporting Threat Constraint
Company B engineers were constrained to exhaust all available internal escalation pathways — including notifying their employer's officials, who in turn notified Company A — before proceeding to external reporting; this constraint was satisfied once Company A dismissed the concerns and Company B officials ordered continuation.
NSPE Code of Ethics; BER precedent on graduated escalation
From identification of safety deficiencies through completion of internal and inter-firm escalation
Honest Disagreement Among Qualified Engineers Permissibility Applied to Company A vs Company B
Technical assessment of whether plans and specifications contained miscalculations and safety deficiencies
Company A engineers' conclusion that the design was adequate and Company B engineers' conclusion that it contained miscalculations and deficiencies represent a genuine honest technical disagreement between qualified engineers — neither party is necessarily acting in bad faith, but the disagreement itself does not resolve the safety question and requires impartial adjudication.
The existence of honest disagreement between qualified engineers does not mean both positions are equally safe to act upon; when one position asserts life-safety risk, the disagreement must be resolved through impartial technical means rather than by deferring to the designing party's authority.
Honest disagreement permissibility does not authorize proceeding with production under the designing firm's self-assessment; it instead requires impartial resolution before life-safety-critical production proceeds.
Honest Disagreement Permissibility and Impartial Referral Mechanism
Irreconcilable technical disagreement between Company A engineers (who dismissed safety concerns) and Company B engineers (who maintained the design was unsafe)
Company A's authority as designing and sealing engineer
The Board recognized that the disagreement between Company A and Company B engineers about the safety of the machinery was an apparent honest difference of professional opinion, and recommended referral to an impartial body of experts — a technical engineering society — as the appropriate mechanism for resolving such a genuine technical dispute.
Honest professional disagreement on safety matters is legitimate and expected; the appropriate response is not unilateral assertion of authority but referral to an impartial expert body, which preserves both the integrity of the safety evaluation and the professional standing of both sets of engineers.
Neither party's view is presumptively correct; impartial referral is the mechanism for resolving the dispute without forcing either set of engineers to abandon their professional judgment.
NSPE Board of Ethical Review (as interpretive guidance)
Technical Engineering Society Independent Determination Framework
it would be appropriate for the question to be referred to an impartial body of experts, such as a technical engineering society in the particular field of practice, for an independent determination.
Board of Ethical Review (as recommended mechanism for dispute resolution)
The Board recommends referral of honest engineering disagreements on safety to an impartial body of experts (e.g., a technical engineering society) for independent determination when two engineering firms hold conflicting safety opinions
Insist-or-Withdraw Binary Safety Response — Company B Engineers After Employer Override
Company B engineers had escalated safety concerns through their employer to Company A; Company A dismissed the concerns; Company B officials ordered continuation of production.
After Company A dismissed safety concerns and Company B officials instructed continuation, Company B engineers were constrained to either insist that production not proceed with the deficient plans or withdraw from the project — with no ethically permissible middle ground of silent continuation.
NSPE Code of Ethics; BER precedent on insist-or-withdraw binary
Inter-Firm Escalation Chain Completed and Rejected
From Company A's rejection of the escalated concern through the end of the scenario
engineers of Company B called the matter to the attention of appropriate officials of their employer who, in turn, advised Company A of the concern expressed by the engineers of Company B
Company B engineers' escalation of safety concern through Company B management to Company A
Company A replied that its engineers felt that the design and specifications for the equipment were adequate and safe
Company A's formal rejection of the safety concern relayed by Company B officials, leaving no further procedural pathway within the existing contractual relationship
Inter-Firm Honest Safety Disagreement Impartial Referral Available
From the point at which inter-firm escalation failed to resolve the safety dispute, through the ethics board's recommendation that referral to an impartial expert body is appropriate
Impartial Expert Referral Available for Inter-Firm Safety Dispute State
The unresolved technical safety disagreement between engineers of Company A and engineers of Company B regarding the machinery design
Referral to and determination by an impartial technical engineering society, or withdrawal of Company B engineers from the project
Honest difference of opinion between Company A and Company B engineers on safety features of the machinery, with no resolution achieved through direct inter-firm communication
Inter-Firm Safety Dispute Impartial Technical Arbitration Referral — Company A and Company B Officials
Company A and Company B engineers held an honest, good-faith disagreement about the safety adequacy of the machinery design; the dispute was irreconcilable through direct inter-firm communication; impartial arbitration was the ethically required next step.
Company A officials and Company B officials
Both Company A officials and Company B officials were constrained to refer the irreconcilable technical safety dispute to an impartial body of technical experts — such as a technical engineering society in the relevant field of practice — rather than resolving it through Company A's unilateral assertion of adequacy and Company B officials' employer-ordered continuation of production.
NSPE Code of Ethics; BER recommendation on impartial expert referral for honest engineering disagreements
Upon determination that the inter-firm safety dispute was irreconcilable through direct negotiation
Loyalty Tension for Company B Engineers Between Employer and Public Safety
Competing obligations to employer (Company B) and to public safety of equipment users and bystanders
Company B engineers owed loyalty to their employer (Company B) and, through the production relationship, to Company A as the designing client — but this loyalty obligation was bounded by their professional ethics and public welfare obligations, which could not be overridden by employer instruction.
Loyalty to employer and client is a genuine professional obligation that must be honored within ethical limits; in this case, the employer's instruction to proceed crossed the ethical boundary established by the life-safety risk, rendering continued loyalty impermissible.
Loyalty is bounded by professional ethics and public welfare; when employer instruction requires proceeding with life-endangering production, loyalty obligation yields to the paramount public safety obligation.
Machinery Design Finalization (Action 1) → Safety Risk Materialization (Event 1)
National Society of Professional Engineers
NSPE Code of Ethics – Section 1(c): Duty to Advise Client or Employer of Project Failure Risk
Section l(c)- 'He will advise his client or employer when he believes a project will not be successful.'
Engineers of Company B; Board of Ethical Review
Cited as the basis for Company B engineers' obligation to notify their employer that the project would not be successful as designed
NSPE Code of Ethics – Section 2: Public Safety, Health, and Welfare Paramount Duty
Section 2- 'The Engineer will have proper regard for the safety, health, and welfare of the public in the performance of his professional duties. If his engineering judgment is overruled by non-technical authority, he will clearly point out the consequences. He will notify the proper authority of any observed conditions which endanger public safety and health.'
Cited as requiring engineers to point out consequences of proceeding under unsafe plans and to notify proper authority of conditions endangering public safety
NSPE Code of Ethics – Section 2(a): Public Welfare Paramount
Section 2(a)- 'He will regard his duty to the public welfare as paramount.'
Cited as the basis for the engineers' paramount duty to the public welfare over employer instructions
NSPE Code of Ethics – Section 2(c): Prohibition on Sealing Unsafe Plans and Withdrawal Obligation
Section 2(c) of the Code is specific in holding that engineers will not complete, sign, or seal plans and/or specifications that are not of a design safe to the public health and welfare.
Section 2(c)- 'He will not complete, sign, or seal plans and/or specifications that are not of a design safe to the public health and welfare and in conformity with accepted engineering standards. If the client or employer insists on such unprofessional conduct, he shall notify the proper authorities and withdraw from further service on the project.'
the purpose and force of Section 2(c) is that the engineer will not participate in any way in engineering operations which endanger the public health and safety.
Central provision analyzed to determine whether Company B engineers must refuse to participate in production of machinery they believe to be unsafe; interpreted broadly to prohibit any participation in engineering operations endangering public health and safety, and to require withdrawal from the project
Engineers of Company B when evaluating their obligations after being instructed to proceed despite identified safety concerns
Primary normative authority governing the obligations of Company B's engineers to prioritize public safety over employer instructions when equipment may endanger lives of persons in proximity to it
Narrow vs. Broad Reading of Section 2(c) Sealing Prohibition
During the ethics board's analysis of whether Company B engineers are ethically permitted to proceed with production absent a sealing obligation
In this situation the engineers of Company 'B' have not been requested, or required, to 'sign, or seal plans and/or specifications' at all. This has been done by the engineers of Company 'A'. A literal construction of the Code language may, therefore, indicate that the engineers of Company 'B' may ethically proceed with their role in the production process. But we think that this is too narrow a reading of the Code
Narrow vs. Broad Code Interpretation Active Dispute State
The ethics board's interpretive determination of whether Section 2(c)'s prohibition on signing/sealing unsafe plans extends to all engineering participation in unsafe operations by engineers who have no sealing role
Ethics board's definitive ruling that the broad purposive reading applies and Company B engineers must refuse participation regardless of their non-sealing role
Company B engineers' argument (or potential argument) that because they were not asked to sign or seal plans, the literal language of Section 2(c) does not prohibit their participation in production
Non-Acquiescence to Unsafe Client Directives Applied to Company B Engineers
Company A's instruction to proceed with production as designed
Company B engineers, having identified safety deficiencies, were obligated not to subordinate their professional safety judgment to Company A's directive (relayed through Company B officials) to proceed with production of potentially life-endangering equipment.
Company A's assertion that its design was adequate and safe does not constitute an independent technical resolution of Company B engineers' safety concerns; non-acquiescence requires refusal to proceed or further escalation.
Non-Acquiescence to Unsafe Client Directives
The non-acquiescence principle requires that Company B engineers not treat Company A's self-assessment as sufficient to override their own professional safety conclusions.
Organizational Impasse Reached (Event 2) → Internal Escalation Channel Exhaustion (Event 4)
Passive Acquiescence Independent Ethical Failure Risk for Company B Engineers
Post-notification conduct of Company B engineers after employer instruction to proceed
If Company B engineers, having notified their officials of safety concerns, then proceeded passively with production after the employer's instruction without further insistence or escalation, they would commit an independent ethical violation — the notification alone does not discharge the paramount public safety obligation.
The ethics code's use of 'paramount' to describe the public safety obligation requires active insistence or withdrawal, not mere mention; proceeding after notification without further action constitutes ethical non-compliance independent of the notification itself.
Passive Acquiescence After Safety Notification as Independent Ethical Failure
Notification is necessary but not sufficient; the paramount nature of the public safety obligation requires active measures beyond initial reporting when the concern remains unresolved.
Passive Safety Acquiescence Independent Ethical Violation — Company B Engineers
Company B engineers had identified safety deficiencies and escalated them; after Company A's dismissal and employer override, passive continuation without active insistence or withdrawal was ethically impermissible.
Passive Safety Acquiescence Independent Ethical Violation Constraint
Company B engineers were constrained from passively acquiescing to the employer's instruction to proceed with production of machinery they believed to be unsafe — passive non-objection in the face of known safety deficiencies constituted an independent ethical violation distinct from any failure to report to external authorities.
NSPE Code of Ethics; BER precedent on passive acquiescence
Post-Client-Override Public Safety Regulatory Escalation — Company B Engineers After Dual Dismissal
Company B engineers had exhausted internal and inter-firm escalation; the safety risk remained unaddressed; regulatory escalation was the next required step.
Post-Client-Override Public Safety Regulatory Escalation Constraint
After Company A's dismissal of safety concerns and Company B officials' override, Company B engineers were constrained to escalate to the applicable regulatory authority when the gravity of the potential danger to public health and safety warranted such escalation — passive acceptance of the override was not a complete discharge of the safety obligation.
NSPE Code of Ethics, Section II.2; BER Case 20-4
Production-Phase Participation Prohibition Applied to Company B Engineers
Company B engineers' decision whether to proceed with production under Company A's sealed but allegedly deficient plans
Deference to sealed plans prepared by another licensed engineer
Employer authority to direct production work
Company B engineers were held to be ethically prohibited from proceeding with production of machinery under Company A's plans and specifications so long as they held the professional opinion that those plans were unsafe, even though they were not the designing or sealing engineers.
The prohibition on participating in unsafe engineering operations applies to all engineers in the production chain, not only to those who prepared or sealed the plans, because each engineer who participates bears professional responsibility for the resulting public safety risk.
Production-Phase Participation Prohibition in Unsafe Design Operations
The Board held that the production-phase engineers' own professional safety judgment governs their participation obligation, not the designing engineers' sealed authority.
In this situation the engineers of Company 'B' have not been requested, or required, to 'sign, or seal plans and/or specifications' at all. This has been done by the engineers of Company 'A'.
Production Employer Safety Override Non-Authority Applied to Company B Officials
Company B officials' instruction to engineers to proceed with production after accepting Company A's dismissal
Company B officials, having relayed safety concerns to Company A and accepted Company A's self-serving dismissal without independent technical review, lacked the professional authority to instruct Company B engineers to proceed — their business instruction did not constitute a legitimate resolution of the engineers' professional safety obligation.
A production employer's acceptance of a designing firm's self-assessment of safety adequacy — without independent technical review — provides no legitimate professional basis for overriding the production firm's own engineers' safety conclusions.
Production Employer Safety Override Non-Authority Principle
The employer's business authority is bounded by the engineers' professional safety obligations; acceptance of the designing party's self-assessment does not discharge the employer's obligation to provide engineers with a legitimate technical basis for proceeding.
Project Withdrawal Obligation Applied to Company B Engineers
Company B engineers' refusal to proceed with production after employer instructed them to continue despite unresolved safety concerns
The Board held that Company B engineers were required to withdraw from further service on the project — refusing to proceed with production — when their safety concerns were dismissed by Company A and overridden by their own employer, because the ethics code mandates withdrawal when a client or employer insists on conduct the engineer believes endangers public safety.
Withdrawal here encompasses refusal to perform production work, not merely refusal to sign documents; the principle applies whenever an engineer is directed to participate in engineering operations they believe to be unsafe.
Project Withdrawal as Ethical Recourse When Safety Standards Rejected
Withdrawal obligation prevailed; the Board explicitly held that employment loss risk is subordinate to the code's requirements.
Project Withdrawal as Ethical Recourse for Company B Engineers
Decision to continue or refuse production of machinery with identified life-safety deficiencies
When Company A rejected Company B engineers' safety concerns and Company B officials instructed continuation, withdrawal from the production engagement became an available and ethically required recourse for Company B engineers who could not in professional conscience proceed with building life-endangering equipment.
Withdrawal is the minimum ethical recourse when insistence on safety correction has failed; it prevents the engineer from lending professional credibility to a production process the engineer has determined to be dangerous.
The risk of employment loss does not excuse proceeding with production of equipment that may endanger lives; withdrawal is ethically required even at personal professional cost.
Public Safety Paramount — Company B Engineers Production of Disputed Machinery
Company B engineers identified miscalculations and technical deficiencies in Company A's plans that might endanger lives; Company A dismissed the concerns; Company B officials instructed engineers to proceed.
Company B engineers were constrained from proceeding with production of machinery they believed to be unsafe, as the paramount obligation to public safety superseded employer instructions to proceed.
NSPE Code of Ethics, Section II.1 (public safety paramount); NSPE Code Section II.2.a
Throughout the production decision period after safety concerns were identified and escalated
Public Welfare Paramount Invoked by Company B Engineers
Review of Company A plans and specifications for potentially dangerous machinery
Company B engineers identified miscalculations and technical deficiencies that could endanger lives of persons in proximity to the equipment, triggering their paramount obligation to protect the public above production and contractual continuity.
In this context, public welfare paramount requires Company B engineers not merely to note concerns internally but to insist on resolution or refuse to proceed, because the identified risk is life-endangering and affects third-party users and bystanders who have no voice in the production decision.
Public welfare paramount overrides employer instruction to proceed and contractual deference to Company A's design authority when lives of persons in proximity are at risk.
What are the ethical obligations of the engineers of Company "B" under the stated circumstances?
At what point, if any, do Company B engineers acquire an obligation to escalate their safety concerns beyond both companies to a public regulatory authority or professional society, and does the Board's conclusion that they should 'refuse to participate' fully discharge that broader public-protection duty?
Does a mere disclaimer of responsibility—without actual withdrawal from the project—satisfy Company B engineers' ethical obligations, or must their refusal be a genuine, complete disengagement from all engineering activity connected with the unsafe design?
What ethical obligations, if any, do the engineers of Company A bear once they have been formally notified by Company B engineers of specific miscalculations and potential dangers—does their dismissal of those concerns without objective re-examination itself constitute an ethical violation?
How should the scope of 'engineering activity connected with the project' be interpreted—does the production-phase participation prohibition extend to administrative, supervisory, or quality-assurance roles that do not directly involve building the disputed machinery?
Does the principle of 'Honest Disagreement Among Qualified Engineers Permissibility' conflict with the 'Going-Along Prohibition After Employer Override'—that is, if Company A engineers hold a genuinely held, professionally defensible contrary view, does that honest disagreement justify Company B engineers continuing to participate rather than withdrawing?
Does the 'Faithful Agent Notification Obligation' to one's employer conflict with the 'Public Welfare Paramount' principle when the employer, after receiving full notification, instructs engineers to proceed—and at what moment does the faithful-agent duty terminate and the paramount public-safety duty take exclusive precedence?
Does the 'Business Decision Boundary Applied to Production Continuation Instruction' conflict with the 'Production Employer Safety Override Non-Authority Applied to Company B Officials'—specifically, is the decision to proceed with production a legitimate managerial business judgment that engineers must respect, or does the public-safety dimension categorically remove it from the domain of permissible business decisions?
Does the 'Graduated Internal Escalation Completed by Company B Engineers' principle conflict with the 'Employment Loss Acceptance Applied to Company B Engineers Refusing Production' principle—that is, once all internal escalation channels are exhausted and the employer still directs continuation, does the engineer's obligation to accept employment loss as a cost of safety refusal arise immediately, or is there an intermediate step of external referral that must first be attempted before withdrawal becomes mandatory?
From a deontological perspective, did the engineers of Company B fulfill their categorical duty to protect public safety when they reported the deficiencies to their employer and through their employer to Company A, or does that duty remain unfulfilled until they actively refuse to participate in production of the disputed machinery?
From a consequentialist perspective, does the Board's prescribed outcome — requiring Company B engineers to refuse participation unless safety is assured — actually maximize public welfare, given that a different manufacturer without safety concerns might simply build the equipment without any internal dissent at all?
From a virtue ethics perspective, does the character of professional integrity demand that Company B engineers not merely refuse to proceed but also proactively escalate the safety concern to a regulatory authority or the public, rather than treating withdrawal from the project as a sufficient expression of professional virtue?
From a deontological perspective, do the engineers of Company A bear an independent duty to objectively re-examine their design upon receiving a formal safety challenge from qualified peer engineers at Company B, and does their dismissal of that concern without documented re-evaluation constitute a violation of their professional obligations regardless of whether their original design was ultimately correct?
If the engineers of Company B had identified the safety deficiencies only after construction of the machinery had already begun rather than during initial plan review, would the Board's prescribed ethical obligations — including the refusal to continue participation — remain identical, or would the imminence of completion and the sunk costs of production alter the ethical calculus?
What if Company A had agreed to submit the disputed design to an impartial expert body as proposed by Company B engineers, but that body had concluded the design was safe while Company B engineers still believed it was dangerous — would the Board's conclusion that Company B engineers must refuse participation until personally satisfied still hold, or would the impartial arbitration outcome override their individual professional judgment?
Would the ethical obligations of Company B engineers have differed if Company B, rather than being a separate manufacturing firm, were a subsidiary or division of Company A, such that the internal escalation chain and the inter-firm escalation chain collapsed into a single organizational hierarchy — and would the Board's recommendation to seek impartial external arbitration still be available as a practical remedy?
If the engineers of Company B had initially raised their safety concerns not through internal channels but directly and publicly to a regulatory authority or the press, bypassing their employer entirely, would the Board have found their conduct ethically justified given the public safety stakes, or would the failure to exhaust graduated internal escalation first constitute an independent ethical violation?
Refusal to Proceed with Production (Action 8) → Public Safety Threat Persistence (Event 3)
Responsibility Disclaimer Non-Equivalence to Genuine Withdrawal — Company B Engineers
Company B engineers faced the binary choice of insisting or withdrawing; if withdrawal was chosen, it had to be genuine rather than a nominal disclaimer.
Responsibility Disclaimer Non-Equivalence to Genuine Project Withdrawal Constraint
If Company B engineers determined that withdrawal was required, they were constrained to effect a genuine cessation of all professional involvement in the production — a mere disclaimer of responsibility for the safety deficiencies without actual disengagement and reporting to proper authorities would not constitute genuine withdrawal.
NSPE Code of Ethics; BER precedent on genuine withdrawal
Upon determination that withdrawal was required
Safety Concern Dismissal Decision (Action 6) → Organizational Impasse Reached (Event 2)
Technical Engineering Society Impartial Arbitration Panel
{'body_type': 'Technical engineering society or expert panel', 'field': 'Relevant field of engineering practice for the machinery in question', 'function': 'Independent determination of safety adequacy of disputed plans and specifications'}
An independent technical engineering society in the relevant field of practice, recommended by the Board as the appropriate impartial body to receive referral of the safety dispute between Company A and Company B engineers and render an independent determination on whether the machinery design is safe.
{'type': 'arbitrates_between', 'target': 'Company A Engineers Dismissing Safety Concerns'}
{'type': 'arbitrates_between', 'target': 'Company B Engineers Refusing Unsafe Production'}
Impartial Safety Dispute Arbitration Body
it would be appropriate for the question to be referred to an impartial body of experts, such as a technical engineering society in the particular field of practice, for an independent determination
Technical Engineering Society Impartial Arbitration Panel Cross-Firm Safety Dispute Adjudication
The independent technical engineering society constituted the appropriate impartial body to receive and adjudicate the irreconcilable technical safety dispute between Company A and Company B engineers, possessing the domain expertise and institutional independence required for objective resolution
The technical engineering society in the relevant field of practice was identified as the appropriate impartial arbitration body for the irreconcilable safety dispute
Designation as the appropriate impartial arbitration body for resolving the cross-firm technical safety dispute about machinery design adequacy
Technical Engineering Society Impartial Arbitration Panel (Impartial Safety Dispute Arbitration Body)
Technical Engineering Society Impartial Arbitration Panel Referral Obligation
The Board recommended referral to an independent technical engineering society as the appropriate mechanism for resolving the irreconcilable technical disagreement between Company A and Company B engineers on the safety adequacy of the plans and specifications.
Technical Engineering Society (Impartial Arbitration Panel)
An independent technical engineering society in the relevant field of practice was the appropriate impartial body to receive and adjudicate the irreconcilable technical safety dispute between Company A and Company B engineers, and both firms were obligated to engage such a body rather than allowing the designing firm's self-assessment to govern production decisions affecting public safety.
Upon determination that direct communication between Company A and Company B had failed to resolve the safety dispute
Ultimate Equipment Users Public Stakeholder
{'status': 'Implied/unnamed', 'risk': 'Equipment unsuitable for intended purpose; potential endangerment of persons in proximity'}
Implied end-users of the manufactured equipment whose safety is at risk if the deficient machinery is built and deployed; their welfare is the primary public safety concern motivating the ethical obligations of Company B engineers.
{'type': 'endangered_by', 'target': 'Company A Engineers Deficient Machinery Designers'}
Unresolved Technical Dispute Between Company A and Company B Engineers on Design Safety
From Company A's formal rejection of Company B's safety concern through the end of the scenario
Company A replied that its engineers felt that the design and specifications for the equipment were adequate and safe and that Company B should proceed to build the equipment as designed and specified
Disputed Design Safety Adequacy Between Originating and Executing Engineer State
Plans and specifications for machinery transferred from Company A to Company B for production
Not terminated within the scenario — dispute remains open
engineers of Company B in reviewing the plans and specifications came to the conclusion that they included certain miscalculations and technical deficiencies
Company A's formal response asserting design adequacy and instructing Company B to proceed, after Company B had raised safety concerns through appropriate channels
Whistleblower Employment Jeopardy for Company B Engineers Refusing to Proceed
Latent from the moment Company B officials issued the instruction to proceed; activated if engineers refuse or escalate externally
Company B engineers who may refuse to proceed with building equipment they believe is dangerous
Company B officials' direct instruction to proceed, implying that refusal or external escalation would be contrary to employer direction and potentially career-threatening
Whistleblower Employment Loss Acceptance — Company B Engineers Safety Refusal
Company B engineers faced potential employment termination as a consequence of refusing to proceed with production of machinery they believed to be unsafe.
Whistleblower Employment Loss Acceptance Mandatory Cost Constraint
Company B engineers were constrained to accept the potential loss of employment as the mandatory cost of refusing to produce life-endangering equipment and of reporting to proper authorities — the prospect of employment loss did not constitute a sufficient justification for failing to fulfill mandatory safety obligations.
NSPE Code of Ethics; BER precedent on whistleblower employment cost
Upon determination that withdrawal and reporting were required
referral to impartial expert body during period of honest disagreement between Company A and Company B engineers