Professional ethics: a life-long pursuit by an engineer

Hong Kong Conventional & Exhibition Centre

After an engineering student has finished the studies in a college, he (or she) is prepared to, usually with much enthusiasm and high hopes, embark into a new world to make use of what he has learnt for the betterment of the society and the engineering profession. The pursuit of the “Real”, the “Good”, and the “Beautiful” has been the highest goal. With the dawning of the e-Commerce and “Dot-Com” era, with the IT (Information Technology) heat sweeping through the world and catching everyone by surprise, and with the rapid replacement of traditional materialistic substances by their electronic and cyber counterparts, we will witness a new economic order and have to adapt ourselves to changes in the engineering discipline. An important goal of continual and life-long education for an engineer is coping with changes around us while discharging various responsibilities required by the profession. This paper discusses, from the perspective of the IT profession and with reference to IT-related scenarios, the issues about professional ethics and the various expectation and requirements made on its members by a professional body.