Question

Use the Engineering Ethics Matrix to analyze the following situation.

As a junior engineer in a small company, you are involved in designing a production line for a new product. The company CEO believes that this new product will make a great deal of money and wants to get it into production as soon as possible. Your immediate supervisor wants to lease the CEO and get things moving, so he/she starts ordering equipment and hires contractors to expand the building. While glancing at a copy of the new project your boss gave to the CEO, you discover an error. The BEP is improbably low and the ROI is improbably high both by factor of about 10. When you ask your immediate supervisor about this, you are told that it is none of your concern. What do you do?

Answer 1

Being a Junior Engineer in the company, one might be undervalued by the senior officers. It is not recommended to move on with a project with low Break Even Points and High Return on Investments. Since you are the only one who has noted this error, you are responsible to report it to the authorities.

But the Immediate supervisor feels no concern about it and expects you to feel so. But this is against ethics.

What you have to do is,

1. Try to collect the copies of project document to show as proof.

2. Inform the officer of the next higher post - preferably the Manager.

3. If he declines the information, convey the error to the Operations Ofiicer.

Meanwhile, Never disclose the information with the other employers.