‘Well’ said our engineer ruefully, … ‘it has been a pretty business for me. I have lost my thumb and I have lost a fifty-guinea fee, and what have I gained?’
‘Experience,’ said Holmes, laughing.
Sherlock Holmes’s remark in the 1892 story ‘The Adventure of the Engineer’s Thumb’ should be taken as a warning shot across the bows for those of us who, finding ourselves out of our depth in a new and challenging situation, fail to catch on quickly enough. And, as like as not, find ourselves in an ethical quagmire.
It happened to me a long time ago. In the context of a contractual commitment by my employer to deliver certain items of equipment on time and at a specified cost, three things became clear at a late stage. First, that the company had misled the client – and perhaps also itself – as to its ability to meet the contractual dates; second, that this information had been withheld from the client until a very late stage; and third, that we had not put into...