Towards a global Code of Ethics for engineers

Theoretically, Codes of Ethics are broad guidelines to professional conduct. These codes are designed to help professionals uphold the highest level of ethical conduct and maintain standards of practice and integrity pertaining to their professional duties. Generally, these guidelines include but not limited to protecting the public interest, demonstrating professional competence, preserving confidentiality, attending to conflict of interest and perpetuating social responsibility. Although different professional engineering societies, in different counties, have different codes of ethics, but they all have some common basic teachings of right and wrong and how to apply it in decisions making process. In this paper, we examine the compatibility of the IEEE code of ethics with thirty two 32 international codes of ethics of professional engineering societies in Africa, Asia, Australia, Europe and Latin America. Our research results show that only four countries have adopted the IEEE code of ethics as is, while the other 28 countries have some variations of it i.e., adopted some articles, ignored some articles and added some of their own. Examining the international articles show that sociopolitical and cultural differences are the main causes of such variations. Finally, our findings shows that a global professional code of ethics is conceivable and can be produced and accepted with minimal conscientious efforts.