You are the CEO of a company that has developed a new fuel cell invented by one of your company’s most creative engineers. After thoroughly testing the system for safety and reliability under a wide range of ordinary conditions, you arrange a sale to a customer operating under unusually stressful conditions (undersea exploration to unprecedented depths and pressures) not covered by your tests. As part of the contract, the customer takes full responsibility for any difficulties that arise under these conditions. In use, the fuel cell fails miserably in the application, due to an unanticipated pressure effect. The inventor, embarrassed by the failure, urges that you fully reimburse the customer for the sale price, keep the failure secret, and allow him to correct the problem at company expense. He argues that you are ethically obligated to do this to uphold the company’s good name. What is the ethical way to respond to the inventor’s request?

Use the Engineering Ethics Matrix.