An Existential Crisis for NDT

by Neal J. Couture, CAE

ASNT was recently recognized at the 34th Annual APEX 2022 Awards for Publication Excellence, a competition for communications professionals. ASNT was awarded an Apex Award of Excellence in the Writing – Editorial & Advocacy Writing category for the Materials Evaluation article “An Existential Crisis for NDT,” written by ASNT Executive Director Neal J. Couture, CAE, and published in the December 2021 issue of Materials Evaluation. Jill Ross and Cara Markland were recognized for their editor roles. The article has been reproduced below. Each issue of Materials Evaluation features a letter written by Couture—ASNT members can check out the most current issue, as well as access an archive of previous issues, here: https://asnt.org/MajorSiteSections/Publications/Periodicals/ME.aspx

ASNT was also awarded an Apex Award of Excellence in the Electronic Media – Apps & Podcasts category for Chat NDT with ASNT, hosted by Debbie Segor, CAE, and edited by Haley Cowans. Listen to the podcast at https://blog.asnt.org/podcasts/ or search for Chat NDT with ASNT in your favorite podcast platform.

Is the nondestructive testing (NDT) field facing a crisis of ethics? If you judge the state of the profession by the number of reports of professional fraud I’ve seen recently, the answer may be “yes.” Here are just a couple of examples from one recent day of news.

In Tacoma, Washington, a metallurgist pleaded guilty to fraud after she spent decades faking the results of strength tests on steel that was being used to make US Navy submarines. Decades. And not just any steel—steel that is currently in our nuclear submarine fleet. Never mind the implications on our defense capabilities having submarines made of possibly deficient steel…what if your son or daughter was serving on those submarines?

A Hawaii man was indicted by a federal grand jury for violating the Atomic Energy Act by making false statements to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), obstruction of NRC proceedings, and bank fraud. This was an NDT professional who worked in the materials and equipment testing industry for over 30 years, serving both as an inspector and as a supervisor of inspectors who used industrial radiography. What he did was create his own company on the side and lied to the NRC to obtain a “materials” license for his side business to obtain a special camera containing radiographic material, stole a separate radiographic camera from his main employer to use in his side business, and then committed bank fraud by lying about his assets to obtain a bank loan for his side business. A man lied to the government to gain access to an item that contained nuclear material.

Sound like the plot from a novel? It gets better (meaning worse). The same man and his network of family and friends are being sued in civil court for fraud and theft of US$400 000 in a complicated scheme involving as many as 50 people being paid to do work under a fake contract. Some of these conspirators hold ASNT’s IRRSP certification. We checked.

An inspector at a high-tolerance machining company in New York falsified inspection reports for space-flight components produced by the company and shipped to SpaceX for use on the company’s Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy rockets. This is on the heels of the US Department of Justice settling charges against a company that falsified test reports on faulty components that led to the failure of back-to-back Taurus launches for NASA.

In addition to what’s publicly reported, I regularly field calls and emails from concerned members reporting people or companies for ethical misconduct in NDT. It is frustrating, as ASNT’s remedies to intervene are extremely limited. We can terminate an ASNT membership, and possibly withdraw an ASNT certification credential, both of which we have done, but that’s the extent of our powers. Many of the accused in these reports haven’t bothered with ASNT membership or certifications. It raises an important question for ASNT: What can a professional association do to influence the ethical culture of a profession?

Other professions have faced similar challenges before, and it can be instructive to examine what they have done to deal with their situations. Here is one example. In the years following the Enron and WorldCom scandals, which on the surface were seen as corporate fraud driven by greed, the accounting profession faced an existential crisis. You see, the real scandal was that CPAs, who were supposed to be protecting the public against unethical corporate accounting practices and fraud, reportedly supported and enabled the fraud. Arthur Andersen, Enron’s accountants and one of the “Big Five” accounting firms at the time, surrendered their licenses to practices as CPAs, which ultimately led to their bankruptcy and demise. Other accounting firms that enabled other corporate fraud suffered major hits to their reputations.

The federal government stepped in and sought to fix the problem the only way they know how—by issuing new regulations and controls over the accounting profession. You may have heard of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act. The Financial Accounting Standards Board substantially raised its standards of ethical conduct. There were more rules, regulations, and oversight added.

The American Institute of Certified Public Accountants (AICPA), for its part, recognized the crisis the accounting profession faced and took assertive action (but some would argue they were too slow to act, and should have helped prevent the problem to begin with). AICPA started by acknowledging the problem and talking about it publicly. They cooperated with the government in developing laws and regulations. They insisted university accounting programs include a minimum number of hours in ethics education. They revised their certification program to require ethics training to become certified and continuing training in ethics to recertify. They produced a portfolio of ethics training programs. They put a full-press effort on to rehabilitate the profession’s reputation, and more than 20 years later, it appears they were quite successful.

This is a warning bell. We don’t know for certain the extent of the ethics problem in NDT—it needs to be examined. But if the profession does not effectively police itself, other institutions will do it for us. All it takes is one high-profile failure of epic proportions for people to take notice. Do we really want the government to intervene? Do we really want our own “Sarbanes-Oxley” to regulate how NDT is managed and performed? Do we really want parents telling their kids to avoid this field because it suffers from a bad reputation? The obvious answer to these questions is a resounding “no,” but the work needs to be done. I encourage you to engage with ASNT in this essential conversation and work with us to ensure the highest of ethical standards and performance in NDT. The public’s trust in NDT depends on it.

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Neal J. Couture, CAE, is Executive Director of ASNT, ncouture@asnt.org.

For more about ethics in NDT:

• ASNT Code of Ethics, https://asnt.org/MajorSiteSections/About/Ethics.aspx
• “NDT Ethics: Rewriting Your Written Practice According to Your Needs” by Greg Weaver, ASNT Pulse, https://blog.asnt.org/ndt-ethics-rewriting-your-written-practice-according-to-your-needs/
• “Ethics in NDT with Todd Sellmer,” Chat NDT with ASNT, https://blog.asnt.org/8-ethics-in-ndt-with-todd-sellmer/
• “Validating Documented Work Experience for Initial NDT Qualification” by Antoinette Bailey, ASNT Pulse, https://blog.asnt.org/validating-documented-work-experience-for-initial-ndt-qualification/
• “Professional Ethics: Falsifying and Failure to Report” by Ronald Nisbet, ASNT Pulse, https://blog.asnt.org/professional-ethics-falsifying-and-failure-to-report/
• “Professional Ethics: The Role of the ‘Whistleblower'” by Ronald Nisbet, ASNT Pulse, https://blog.asnt.org/professional-ethics-the-role-of-the-whistleblower/
• “Professional Ethics: The Employer and Employee Relationship” by Ronald Nisbet, ASNT Pulse, https://blog.asnt.org/professional-ethics-the-employer-and-employee-relationship/