Professional Ethics
Ethics questions are situational: a client request, a conflict, a piece of data, a community that will be harmed. The exam wants the duty that governs and the action that follows.
The duties
- Public interest primacy - where client instruction and public welfare conflict, the planner must not misrepresent impacts.
- Competence - accept work only within your qualifications, disclose limits, use specialists.
- Honesty and integrity - no deceptive advocacy, no withholding of adverse findings, no fabricated data or maps.
- Conflict of interest - disclose financial or personal interests; recuse where a reasonable observer would doubt objectivity.
- Confidentiality - qualified, not absolute: it yields where public safety or a legal duty requires disclosure.
- Fairness - no discrimination in service delivery; attention to distributional impacts.
- Iranian institutional context - the engineering organisation system licenses professionals and disciplines them; civil liability attaches to negligent professional acts and to seals applied to work not actually performed.
Worked example
A developer asks you to certify a floor area 15% above the approved detailed plan "temporarily", promising to regularise later. Correct reasoning: the certificate is a legal representation of fact, so signing it is a false statement regardless of the client's intention; it also harms third parties who rely on the plan. Action: refuse, state the legal basis, document the request in writing, and offer a compliant alternative - a density transfer request or a formal amendment application. Escalate internally if pressed. The duty to the public and to the truth outranks loyalty to the fee.
Traps
- Treating confidentiality as absolute when safety is at risk.
- Confusing advocacy for a client with advocacy for a position you know to be false.
- Believing disclosure alone neutralises a conflict; disclosure plus recusal is often required.