Obligation-Conflict Resolution
Case 16-10 (2016) · Public Health, Safety and Welfare-Former Employee's Participation in a Public Safety Standards Hearing
Professional obligations conflict, and the board applies no fixed rule for which one wins.
Each resolution is recorded as three edges:
competesWith (the tension),
prevailsOver (the obligation the board allowed to win in this case), and
defeasibleUnder (the situation under which the yielding obligation gives way).
The same tension is then traced across comparable cases, where its resolution shifts with context.
Hover any obligation or state to see its definition; click to open it in OntServe.
How this case resolved it
No obligation was overridden in this case: the board resolved the apparent tension without defeat, as recorded below.
Resolved without defeat
The board resolved the apparent tension here by setting a duty's boundary (specification) or by finding no genuine conflict on the facts (dissolution), rather than by allowing one obligation to prevail over another.
dissolution
Because Engineer A's general safety knowledge could be separated from Company X's specific confidential business information, the board concluded that both public welfare and confidentiality could be honored simultaneously through scope-limited testimony rather than by subordinating one duty to the other.
specification
Given that some of Engineer A's knowledge predates or is independent of the Company X engagement while other knowledge derives from proprietary internal data, the board concluded that Engineer A can testify by relying on the former category and withholding the latter.
What the board concluded
- The NSPE Board of Ethical Review does not believe there is any clear ethical prohibition on Engineer A from participating in the public safety standards hearing as long as (1) Engineer A possesses the technical competence to serve as an engineering expert in the area in which Engineer A is testifying; (2) Engineer A testifies in an objective and truthful manner; and (3) Engineer A does not...