Other professions are self regulating, if you do unethical things your peers (the AMA or legal boards) will strip you of your license to practice and then you can’t find a job.

It would be too much to expect engineers to somehow be angels without the threat of punishment when even doctors need these systems.

But on the other hand, imagine if you heard about this agile thing but you can’t legally apply it because waterfall is mandated and if you apply agile you might be stripped of your license to practice software engineering.

I am not condoning the unethical practices, but every profession has people who are below the bar you talk about. The reasons why they do it are as varied as the peoples of the world.

>We should expect everybody to care about the morality and ethics of their actions.

This isn't a very meaningful statement as people widely disagree about what the ethical action is.