Ethical challenges in the workplace: Are these future engineers prepared?

Ethics in engineering is not a new issue; however it has become an increasing concern in Malaysia. Studies investigating the ethical awareness of future engineers in Malaysia are scarce. For this reason, this study attempts to determine the level of ethical awareness of engineering students. A total of 451 final year engineering students from two cohorts in Malaysian public universities have participated in this study. An inventory of multiple context ethical situations is used to assess ethical awareness. Findings show that, in general, students show a good level of ethical awareness. These students appear to have higher level of ethical awareness when compared to accounting students. Between gender, female engineering students seem to have higher ethical awareness than their male counterpart. Among recommendations is to expose the students to be aware of some workplace and business-related ethical issues.