A situation in which a professional must choose between competing values, such as personal against professional ones; naming the recurring patterns raises awareness and so makes them happen less often.

Berenbach and Broy (Professional and Ethical Dilemmas in Software Engineering, IEEE Computer, 2009) identified nine dilemmas that recur in real projects, named them and placed them in the context of the IEEE code of conduct. None of them needs a villain: each one puts an ordinary engineer between two things they care about, for example keeping the manager happy and telling the customer the truth. A pattern with a name is easier to recognise while you are in it, and easier to raise in a meeting.

The nine: Mission impossible, Mea culpa, Rush job, Not my problem, Red lies, Fictionware vs. vaporware, Nondiligence, Canceled vacation, Sweep it under the rug.

Someone creates or accepts a project plan they know cannot be met, because of pressure or other reasons; the result is burnt-out staff and lost revenue.

The dilemma lies in the moment of accepting the schedule: objecting feels like refusing an order, so the plan gets signed. Consequences:

• loss of qualified staff through overload and burnout,
• lost revenue because customers were given false promises.

The matching ACM/IEEE imperative is to honour assigned responsibilities, which includes requesting a change to an assignment you believe cannot be completed as defined. The obstacle is organisational culture, in which accepting whatever a supervisor assigns is the norm.