EP#413: The Gray Zone with Kent Johnson

This week Parker and Stephen welcome Kent Johnson to the show to discuss ethics in engineering. It’s a topic that has been alluded to over the course of Circuit Break, but this is the first time Parker and Stephen have delved into it with a real expert on the matter. Yes, most companies have standards and regulations and a moral code that guide them but, as Kent suggests, there are more ethical gray areas in the realm of engineering than we might realize. Topics covered here include:

• Discovering something isn’t being done properly at your new job
• Agreeing to work on something with life-or-death consequences, and you don’t really know what you’re doing
• Bypassing important project safety tests to meet a deadline
• Crediting others in an age of ChatGPT and redefinitions of plagiarism
• How do you credit and use open source code?
• Why siloed departments at companies are causing such harm to work dynamics
• The tyranny of the spec
• The true dangers of “failure” or “gotcha” work cultures
• Accepting accountability and being willing to change
• Avoiding QC by zipping the lip
• +more

About our guest:

Kent Johnson is Senior Corporate Advisor for the Religious Freedom & Business Foundation and a management consultant on religious diversity at work. With over 37 years of experience as a Senior Counsel at Texas Instruments, Kent is a seasoned legal expert who specializes in corporate law, ethics, product liability, antitrust, medical/FDA law, and mergers and acquisitions. Since leaving Texas Instruments in 2018, Kent has been helping companies adopt best practices regarding religious diversity and inclusion in the workplace. He is also Stephen’s father-in-law, so this really a family show this week.

Relevant links:

• Kent Johnson (LinkedIn)
• Religious Freedom & Business Association
• Why Are Ethics Important In Engineering?
• Circuit Break Podcast #14: Discrepant Diodes
• Circuit Break Podcast #410: Eighth Annual MacroFab Star Wars Christmas Special Somehow this Podcast Returned
• Join the Circuit Break Discourse Community!

Thank you for listening to the MacroFab Engineering Podcast! We’d love to hear what you think of the show so please tweet at us @MacroFab and join our Circuit Break Community for discussions or email us at podcast@macrofab.com.