Ethics

 

The Eyes of Texas

The Eyes of Texas are upon you,
All the livelong day.
The Eyes of Texas are upon you,
You cannot get away.
Do not think you can escape them
At night or early in the morn --
The Eyes of Texas are upon you
Til Gabriel blows his horn.

What are you looking at? Are you looking at me? Are you talking to me?

While I don’t think highly of certifications, I have accepted that others do and am willing to do my part to be certified, since I already know that I am certifiable.  Oh not that kind, huh.  It means in my case being certified as a Professional Engineer. This mean that others have examined my credentials and are willing to vouch for me .  My attitude without this necessity has been  “I don’t want to be a member of any club that would have me as a member,” and “Who are you to judge me?”  Nevertheless, professionally as a short cut I have allowed others to certify me. And while the certification of a driver’s license is honored in every state, certification as a Professional Engineer is not always honored in every state. And to protect themselves various government agencies require that a member of its consultant project team be a certified PE in that jurisdiction. My firm, which has almost no engineers, wanted to pursue a project in Saskatchewan. Canada for the Ministry of Transport, but the catch is that their had to be a someone with a Saskatchewan PE on the team, which fell to me.

Many states have reciprocity with other state licensing boards such that the requirements to apply for a PE are much reduced, ( although the fees are never reduced!) The only US state which had reciprocity with Saskatchewan at that time was Texas ( because largely of the need to transfer oil PEs to the Saskatchewan Tar Sands). Thus since I had PEs in MA, RI, NY it was time for me to apply for a PE in Texas using the reciprocity of those other states, only for the purposes of then using Texas’s reciprocity to apply for a PE in Saskatchewan.

While most of the requirements are waived, the ethics exam is almost never waived. Since my son calls me “By the Book” Beagan, I had no qualms about taking an ethics exam. To my surprise the ethics exam for the Texas PE was not “Should you lie under oath, Yes or No?” It was “ When you lie under oath, what statue of the Texas Penal code are you violating?”  Not being familiar with the Texas Penal Code, I naturally failed the first attempt at the Texas PE ethics exam. However the exam was on‑line, and you were immediately given the chance to retake the exam. The on-line exam also had exactly the same questions every time which meant that since each question was multiple choice with only 4 possible answers, eventually by the laws of statistics, I knew that by simply guessing I could pass the exam. On the fourth try I passed the Texas PE ethics exam. I am so proud that Texas has determined that I am ethical. BTW,  that Saskatchewan project never never materialized and to save money I never applied for a Saskatchewan PE. But for a time the Eyes of Texas were upon me and certified me as ethical. Nice to know, Texas! And while I never certified any construction documents in Texas, I could have. But fortunately I am wise enough not to ride in a tunnel whose plans I certified.