There is a
grey line between morals and ethics, one that most get mixed up. Morals are personal. They are from the way you are raised, the way
others have influenced you. They are your
own code of conduct. Ethics are a set of
accepted guidelines for a culture. That
is, culture of a certain career. Most
careers, especially in the engineering world, have their own professional code
of ethics. Ethics are not laws and they
do not require some police force to enforce them. They mean, almost in a vigilante sense, to
hold professional peers to the standard.
They can be thought of as heuristics, as they are general guidelines, or
hand rails, but will not solve the complete problem for you.
In dealing
with real world problems, those heuristics can be the best approach to
start. However, when ethics takes you as
far as it can, you have to rely on your own morals to solve the problem. They have been with you all your life, and
will assist you in weighing options and making the final decision.
-AK
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