Whistleblower Obligation
Definition
The duty, found in the NSPE and ASCE codes and some statutory provisions, to inform appropriate parties when an engineer becomes aware of a public safety risk that the client or employer fails to address.
- Source codes
- NSPE and ASCE codes of ethics
- Trigger
- Awareness of an unaddressed public safety risk
- Duty holder
- The engineer, when client or employer fails to act
- Basis
- Professional codes and some statutory provisions
Common questions
Who must an engineer notify under a whistleblower obligation?+
The codes direct the engineer to inform the appropriate authority, which may be a regulatory board, a client's oversight body, or public officials, depending on the nature of the risk and the jurisdiction's specific rules.
Does raising a concern internally first satisfy the whistleblower obligation?+
Professional codes generally expect the engineer to escalate internally first where practical, but the obligation to inform appropriate external parties remains if the employer or client fails to address a genuine public safety risk.
Related terms
- ASCE Code of Ethics
- The code of the American Society of Civil Engineers, structured around four fundamental principles (justice, sustainability, competence, and public safety) and supporting...
- Confirmation Bias
- The cognitive tendency to search for, interpret, favour, and recall information in a way that confirms or supports one's prior beliefs or...
- Hindsight Bias
- The tendency to view a past outcome as having been more predictable than it was, because the outcome is now known. In...
- NSPE Code of Ethics
- The ethical code of the National Society of Professional Engineers (US), built around six fundamental canons, the first of which requires engineers...
- Professional Registration
- A state-issued licence or registration that permits an engineer to offer engineering services to the public. In the US this is the...