The Issue of Professional Ethics of Expert Witnesses - Software Engineers

Abstract

It is universally accepted that in the practice of their profession, expert witnesses should refrain from unethical behavior, but what it is “unethical” is often difficult to determine. There is a question against which standard an ethical nature of one’s behavior can be measured. The first source of information about what is considered unacceptable professional conduct should be a code of ethics of the profession to which expert witness belongs, and which makes a set of norms, values and goals which should be followed by members of certain professions in the application of their professional skills. In this paper we present an ethical code of the software engineering profession, since engineers-expert witnesses are increasingly invited to provide expert testimony in court in this field.