Situated in critiques of the “moral muteness” of technical rationality, we examine concepts of ethics and the avoidance of ethical language among Australian gas pipeline engineers. We identify the domains in which they saw ethics as operating, including public safety, environmental protection, sustainability, commercial probity, and modern slavery. Particularly with respect to ethical matters that bear on public safety, in the course of design and operational activities, engineers principally advocated for action using technical language, avoiding reference to potential consequences such as death or destruction of property. Within their organizations, they saw themselves as occupying a technical “line of defense”. We argue that this focus on technical language is action-oriented. Ethics tells practitioners of unacceptable outcomes, but it does not guide them in what they need to do to avoid that outcome in practice. We observed some cases where engineers had not made the connection between their role and ethics in the sense of public safety. We argue that muteness on ethical matters can obscure the nature of the risk where technical advice is being taken on by non-technical actors, and where technical actors themselves do not have a clear sense of their public safety obligations.

在对技术理性的“道德沉默”的批评​​中，我们研究了澳大利亚天然气管道工程师中的道德概念和避免使用道德语言。我们确定了他们认为道德运作的领域，包括公共安全、环境保护、可持续性、商业诚信和现代奴隶制。特别是在涉及公共安全的伦理问题上，在设计和运营活动过程中，工程师主要提倡使用技术语言采取行动，避免提及死亡或财产破坏等潜在后果。在他们的组织内，他们认为自己占据了一条技术“防线”。我们认为这种对技术语言的关注是面向行动的。道德告诉从业者不可接受的结果，但它并没有指导他们在实践中需要做什么来避免这种结果。我们观察到一些工程师没有将他们的角色与公共安全意义上的道德联系起来的案例。我们认为，在非技术参与者接受技术建议以及技术参与者本身对其公共安全义务没有明确认识的情况下，对道德问题的沉默会掩盖风险的性质。