Doing the Right Thing

Abstract

Codes of conduct were at the heart of guild organization in Europe in the Middle Ages.Were you competent to do something? Could you vouch for a product's quality? Would you promise to charge a fair price? Today, most engineers think of themselves as professionals, rather than as members of a craft. And as more and more engineers have been taken into the employ of large corporate or governmental organizations, very few still work as independents, certified and bound by guild conventions. Yet just about every engineer would agree that rules of right conduct exist and are more fundamental than technical standards or an employer's edicts. Those basic rules bear a spiritual kinship to the craft conventions of old–even if they are not direct descendants of them the way the rules of war can be traced to medieval codes of chivalry, which maintained that, for example, no knight should kill another in battle who sought his mercy.