That's really interesting for me. I did a CS and EE dual degree and we have a required ethics course as part of the engineering program (it's a requirement from Engineers Canada for an engineering accreditation). In the CS program, things like this were only discussed in context (e.g. privacy and security were discussed in the elective security class I took).
Comparing the two, I did find the formal discussion in the Ethics class to be really interesting. It was a simple pass/fail course, we weren't really graded on things, other than being required to show up and talk about the kinds of issues we might encounter in the field. Some as mundane as a manager pushing you to shrink estimates and cut corners (ahem, software), some as serious as failing to do proper load analysis and having a shopping mall roof collapse after a heavy snowfall.
Comparing the two, I did find the formal discussion in the Ethics class to be really interesting. It was a simple pass/fail course, we weren't really graded on things, other than being required to show up and talk about the kinds of issues we might encounter in the field. Some as mundane as a manager pushing you to shrink estimates and cut corners (ahem, software), some as serious as failing to do proper load analysis and having a shopping mall roof collapse after a heavy snowfall.