"WHY SHOULD DESIGNERS BE RESPONSIBLE?" A Critical Report on Teaching Ethical Judgment in Design Research

“Why should designers be responsible for what happens afterwards?” This question, raised by a student during a workshop on research ethics, became the starting point of this pedagogical reflection. The discussion did not concern plagiarism, informed consent, or institutional approval, but a more fundamental disagreement about whether designers and researchers should be accountable for the foreseeable consequences of their decisions. Rather than viewing this resistance as a misunderstanding to be corrected, this paper argues that it exposed two contrasting understandings of ethics within contemporary design education.