The audit was one of the actions proposed in the 2022 report ‘Engineering Ethics: maintaining society’s trust in the engineering profession’, which the Engineering Council and RAEng agreed to take forward with the support of the professional engineering institutions.
The independent findings in the ‘Ethics in the Engineering Profession’ audit found that the UK engineering profession has a good foundation of ethical practice, that ethical behaviour compares favourably with the wider workforce, and that engineers and technicians take ethics very seriously. However, there is also variation in the support for ethical practice across the industry that must be addressed in a coordinated fashion.
The audit was carried out by GoodCorporation and involved asking more than 2,000 individuals, companies and professional institutions about their experience of ethical practice. It also compared the experience of engineers and technicians with over 3,000 responses from...