Engineers are supposed to display the highest standards of honesty and integrity. Engineering has a direct and crucial impact on the quality of life for all people. The services that engineers provide demand honesty, impartiality, fairness, and equity, and must be dedicated to the protection of the public health, safety, and welfare (NSPE Code of Ethics). Engineers must work under a standard of professional behavior that honors the highest principles of ethical conduct.
As a result of doing a Cost Benefit Analysis and a Multi-Attribute Analysis, there are ethical problems that arise. In practice, cost-benefit analysis displays several problems, varying from deep ethical and logical contradictions to a persistent likelihood toward predicting errors and discriminatory abuse (Ackerman, 2008). Some of these flaws could in theory be corrected; others are ingrained in the methodology, and emphasize the need for alternatives. Other, equally reasonable approaches to decision-making are obtainable; these alternative approaches have the added advantage of recognizing the multidimensional difficulty of environmental issues and the inevitable role of uncertainty.
Cost-benefit analysis strictly requires monetary values for benefits. If the protection of human life and natural systems are unpriced, they will remain warning labels attached to an incomplete numerical calculation – and it is usually the numerical bottom line, complete or not, that will be remembered and acted upon (Brown, 2008). Cost-benefit analysis calls for a numerical price to be placed on the lives saved. The impossibility of a meaningful monetary answer is no obstacle; some number, whether it is sensible or not, is needed in cost-benefit analysis. The failure of cost-benefit analysis, arises from the attempt to weigh costs, which usually have a price, on the same scale as benefits, which often have a dignity. In a framework in which money is all that matters, priceless benefits are valued at zero by default. This violates the NSPE Code of Ethics
Closely related to the problem of priceless values is the unseen assumption that everything can be traded for everything else. Yet, the assumption becomes misleading and concerning when artificial prices are applied to the fundamentally non monetary values of life, health, and nature, as is necessary in cost-benefit analysis (Ackerman, 2008). The ethical implications depend entirely on whether or not the winners compensate the losers.
Financial analysis becomes problematic and controversial when extended beyond its domain of validity. When the time span is so large that different generations are involved in costs today and benefits tomorrow, the analogy to an individual investment decision breaks down. Instead, questions of intergenerational responsibility are involved, ultimately reflecting our commitments to and desires for our descendents. To reflect any serious responsibility to future generations, the discount rate must be quite low.
Cost-benefit analysis can be a very useful tool in assessing regulations, but it can be a corrupting influence, if it becomes primary definition of the public interest, squeezing out the ethical dimension of public policy.
In technological systems, decisions are often governed by Multi-Attribute Analysis techniques that take into account mutually opposing criteria for the system, and it results in ranking of alternatives (Crnkovic, 2015). It is based on value systems of decision-makers, and ethical deliberation in the process is implied. It is necessary to make decision-making in technological systems transparent such that value basis and ethical considerations become explicit and subject or scrutiny of involved stakeholders. As different priorities, value systems and ethical choices result in different technical solutions, such solutions when put in use will promote those intrinsic and implicit values. In a society with global technology, value aspects of technology are essential. Currently, there is no explicit mechanism to expose ethical aspects in these analyses, so they can easily be forgotten.