The Ethics of Maintaining Continued Professional Competence

The engineer's active role in today's society demands that he be held to the profession's standards of professional competence. Professional competence involves not only professional adequacy but professional development. The engineer owes the public continued development through the trust placed in him to carry out his duties in a responsible manner. Continued development raises the competency level of the individual and profession as a whole. Many methods are available to maintain professional competence but not all engineers utilize them. To insure continued professional competence to the public, the profession should make it mandatory within engineering.