I am currently interviewing for environmental consulting jobs in the northeast US and some advice given to me recently was to strongly consider the ethical practices of the respective consulting companies. Specifically, whether their work is strongly rooted in science, whether they inherently tend to protect corporations over the environment or populations at risk, or whether employees have ever felt that they need to promote something they feel is morally wrong (e.g. telling people exposed to industrial toxic chemicals that they don’t have a right to retaliate despite real and harmful impacts or promoting harmful regulatory workarounds for oil and gas companies). I understand that there is a lot of variation within teams for each company, but I would love to hear any experiences from people working at firms with offices in the NE that have felt morally conflicted about their work. Some companies I had in mind are Ramboll, Roux, AECOM, Exponent, Gradient, Karen Clark & company, and GeoSyntec, but would love to hear others as well.
Lastly, I would appreciate any advice for how to get a feel for ethics of a company during the interview process. I’m struggling with potential questions I could ask that would not come across as accusatory but would help show any red flags.