Absolutely. But finances are pretty standardized, software is vastly more complex. Audits are a good idea, but it's an incredibly hard problem.
If an architect is asked to design a bridge that isn't safe they can refuse, secure in the knowledge they can't be replaced with someone willing to do it, as no licensed architect will knowingly design an unsafe bridge.
Of course, a licensing scheme would probably have a bunch of disadvantages.
One other aspect which might be even stronger would be if the professional organization had a role not unlike a union in protecting its members’ professional decisions. Imagine if you worked at VW and your boss told you to make a change which affected safety, emissions, etc. – how different might your reaction be if you know that if you refused or reported it to the appropriate regulators and there were repercussions the Bitpackers Guild could provide legal representation and expert witnesses for you, stage a strike where no licensed engineer would work for an irresponsible company, or simply ensure a lot of publicity? Suddenly it's not “go lean on Sally until she gives the engineering sign-off. She can't afford to quit until her kid's out of college” but “do we want a team of professional engineers to hold a press conference saying we're cutting corners over our experts' judgement?”
There are certainly potential downsides but … anyone who drives a car, uses medical equipment, etc. might reasonably conclude they're worth it, particularly if the system was structured to focus on transparency and due process rather than the pathology some unions are prone to where members are always defended even when they're in the wrong.
Sure, as per the construction industry.
Or perhaps simply the threat of being prosecuted for manslaughter or bodily harm, etc?
If I am an employee of the company, and someone else is telling me what to do for my job, and particularly if they are telling me how to do my job, they must necessarily share responsibility for anything that I do pursuant to obeying those instructions.
And threat of retribution leads to stupid practices:
public void CoverYourAss()
{
try
{
int x = 0;
}
catch
{
throw;
}
}
You'd better believe I was sending out resumes the day I found out about that.
I can only imagine how bad it would be if the penalty was to be fired plus arrested and/or sued.
A defeat device does not get installed accidentally. It's not like a mutation propagating through evolution of living things. Someone decided to put it there, and someone got paid to do it. There was an additional requirement added, one that had no official test coverage. It was to increase fuel economy and produce more pollution when no one was paying attention to the emissions.
As far as the developers were concerned, they did everything right. They built the code their employers asked them to build. It passed the official tests. This was a triumph; I'm making a note here: "huge success!"
The developers worked for the automakers, not the testers or the public. They did what VW wanted, which was to game the system to make more money. You're not ever going to do more than start an arms race as long as the developer is taking orders (and getting hired or fired) by the guy who just wants to sell more cars.