An engineering is not only professionally responsible to his or her employer, clients, or colleagues; and society and the profession, but is also responsible ethically to follow the code of ethics. This code differs from region to region and in Ontario, it is governed by the Professional Engineers Act. For example, an extract from section 77 of Regulation 941 accompanies this Act states "2. A practitioner shall, i. regard the practitioner's duty to public welfare as paramount[.]".
It is always appropriate in any technical presentation by a professional engineer to use the appropriate Code of Ethics to support an argument. For example, attention must be brought to a process which may bring serious harm to the environment. This potential harm should be appropriately quantified and where necessary, the appropriate regulations should be quoted.