Is society less ethical than ever? One might get that impression, but ethics professor Deborah G. Johnson at the University of Virginia said, "It's too complex to measure.

"In some ways, yes, and in some ways, no," she told me.

"Society functions mostly by a set of implicit rules and it's because most people follow those rules-not the fact that society has laws that people are afraid to break-that order is kept," Johnson explained.

I'd have to agree, although the pessimist in me does believe that ethical standards have taken a dive during my lifetime. All too often we hear about people trying to get away with doing the least they can do, perpetrating scams and scandals, even if they hurt others.

There are two groups of people I don't think suffer from the same ethical lapses as the rest of us mortals: physicians and engineers. The two professions seem not only to demand a high standard of ethical behavior but also, for the most part, to attract people who already have such high standards.

Once in a while you might hear about a doctor who performs unnecessary surgeries on his patients solely for the money, or an engineer who knows about a product's fatal design flaw, but fails to reveal it to avoid making waves. But those instances are few and far between. They are often due to some serious defect in the person or in his or her dedication to the profession, or both. And when those ethical breaches do occur, they make news.

Philosophers argue that engineering, as a profession, requires a different kind of ethics from medicine. They contend that engineers' work depends less on direct interpersonal relationships than it does on relationships to machines, buildings and products, and that it is more bound up in particular economic systems than is a profession like medicine.

John Ladd, professor emeritus of philosophy at Brown University, discussed those points and others in an essay, "Collective and Individual Moral Responsibility in Engineering: Some Questions," published in IEEE Technology and Society Magazine in June 1982.

Because engineers usually work for a larger organization or company, unlike physicians who are often in their own practice, it can be more complicated to deal with ethical problems in engineering, Ladd said. And because engineers "have organizations rather than individuals as clients," he said, "their being part of a large system or organization such as a corporation encourages a sense of futility and helplessness as far as being ethical is concerned."

Engineers might fear reprisal from an employer, Ladd said, if they're troubled by moral questions raised by the company's or their own actions.

I think that most engineers, if confronted with a serious ethical question, would rise above fearing punishment from their employers and take a stand. It goes hand in hand with my belief that engineers want to build faster chips, create more efficient systems and design better devices not just because they are paid to do so, but because they have a burning desire to produce something of use, to contribute something that improves someone else's life, and does no harm.

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