Engineering ethics does not begin when a product fails. It does not even begin at Product Release.

It begins earlier—when an organization commits to product content and accepts the engineering obligation created by that decision.

This white paper defines two epistemic boundaries:

Formal Commitment — the organization asserts that it sufficiently understands the intended content, technology, interfaces, remaining uncertainty, and development burden to justify proceeding.

Product Release — the organization asserts that the committed engineering work has been completed and that verification and validation evidence is sufficient to support the released product claim within the validated envelope.

The distinction matters because schedules, reviews, supplier confidence, regulatory closure, completed paperwork, and organizational authority cannot substitute for technical evidence.