Third article in a three-part series on where you draw the ethical line.
If I asked whether you consider yourself an ethical person, you’d probably say yes. Most of us would.
The harder question is what you’re prepared to do when acting on your ethical line comes at a personal cost.
This is the third article in this series on ethical issues at work. In the first, I explored how easy it can be to miss the moment when a workplace compromise starts to cross your ethical line. Last week, I looked at what happens once you recognise that line, speak up, and the decision still doesn’t change.
This week is about what you do next, and this is where it often gets much harder.
There Are More Than Two Options
So, what are your options?
It can be tempting to frame the choice as simple: should you stay or go? It’s more nuanced than that, and there are other ways you might respond.
Economist Albert Hirschman offers a useful way to think about this.¹ Looking at how people respond when an organisation they belong to starts to decline, he described two broad responses: exit and voice. You leave, or you stay and try to change things. Loyalty, he argued, influences which of those you reach for.
Professor Caryl Rusbult and her colleagues later extended this thinking.² They examined responses to declining job satisfaction across two dimensions: whether the response is active or passive, and whether it is constructive or destructive.
Bringing those threads together produces four possible responses:
- Voice: You actively try to improve or change the situation.
- Loyalty: You stay and wait, in the belief (or hope) that things will improve in time.
- Exit: You leave the role and/or organisation.
- Neglect: You stay, but your effort, care or engagement declines and you are less invested in the role/organisation.
The model isn’t designed to tell you which response is ethically right, but rather to help you notice how you’re responding, and whether that behavioural response is deliberate.
Of the four, neglect is perhaps the easiest to drift into. You stay and keep going: doing the work, attending the meetings, showing up and fulfilling the responsibilities of the role. But something has shifted, and so too has your behaviour.
It is worth understanding how that drift happens at a broader level, and why small moral compromises tend to accumulate quietly before anyone notices.
You might stop raising the issue because you know where the conversation will go. You might become more careful about what you put your name to and avoid meetings where the topic might surface. You might start wondering how long you can keep working this way. You might start withdrawing from decision-making and complete the work with less care.
Meanwhile, you’re still there, connected to the decision and part of what happens next.
What Unresolved Concerns Leave Behind
Deciding to let an ethical issue go doesn’t mean its impact on you disappears. What can arise is moral distress.
While much of the research in this area comes from healthcare, the pattern is recognisable in other workplaces too.
Philosopher Andrew Jameton described moral distress as what happens when you believe you know the right course of action but feel constrained from taking it.³
He later distinguished between initial distress, which is what you experience in the moment, and reactive distress, which can remain when the situation is not resolved.
Researchers Elizabeth Epstein and Professor Ann Hamric later built on this by examining moral residue and developing what they called the crescendo effect.⁴ Their model suggests that when morally distressing situations repeatedly go unresolved, something can be left behind. New situations can reactivate what came before, and over time the accumulated weight can build.
If you’ve ever noticed that a relatively minor request landed much harder than you expected, this may feel familiar. Your response in that moment may not have been about the issue in front of you right now. It may have carried some of the reaction and weight from decisions that came before it.
If You Stay, Stay Deliberately
Staying can be an entirely legitimate choice.
Not every ethical concern justifies leaving, and there will be situations where you have more capacity to influence what happens next when you’re inside the organisation rather than outside.
The difference between staying and drifting is whether you’ve thought about the terms on which you’re staying.
Staying also doesn’t mean agreeing to participate in everything that follows. You may decide to remain in the organisation while being clear that there are specific actions you won’t take, approve or put your name to.
So before you settle back into the work, get clear on:
- What you won’t do – This links back to the ethical line you identified in the first article in this series. Name the specific actions you won’t take, approve or put your name to.
- What would need to change – Identify what would need to be different for your concern to be resolved, so you can recognise progress if it happens.
- What you’ll record – Keep a factual account of what you observed, what you raised and the response you received.
- When you’ll review it – Decide when you will consciously reassess the situation to examine if that alters what you now need to do.
Without a deliberate reassessment point, staying can easily become the default. Over time, you may find yourself crossing your ethical line more than you intended.
If You Take It Further, Prepare Properly
Sometimes the seriousness of the issue means the internal conversation isn’t the end of it.
Your next step might involve a formal internal process, a professional body, a regulator, or another external avenue.
This is a significant step, and it deserves serious reflection and preparation. Get qualified advice before you act, rather than afterwards. Understand the obligations that apply to you, the protections that may be available and the realistic consequences of taking the matter further.
If you’re considering an external disclosure, make sure you understand any confidentiality, professional or reporting obligations that apply.
In all situations, keep the substance factual by describing what happened and what you observed, rather than what you believe someone intended.
As well, be honest with yourself about your motive. If your aim has shifted from addressing the issue to proving you’re right, it’s worth stopping to ask whether your next step serves the issue or simply your position, feelings or ego.
If You Leave, Leave Well
Leaving can also be a legitimate choice, particularly when staying would require you to keep participating in something you can no longer support.
But if you decide to go, do it properly. A resignation made in a moment of frustration rarely serves you well, and it may do little to help the situation you’re leaving behind.
So plan it out carefully. For example, it helps to:
- Understand your financial position and timing – Know what leaving means for you financially, what commitments you need to manage and whether there are practical reasons to stay for a defined period while you prepare your next move.
- Be clear about what you will say – Think carefully about how you explain your departure and to whom. Keep the message factual and measured, particularly where confidentiality, contractual or professional obligations apply.
- Preserve the relationships you can – You may be disappointed with the decision or the organisation, but that does not mean every relationship needs to end with it. The working world is small, and relationships built over many years are worth protecting where you can.
- Protect your professional reputation – How you leave will shape how people remember the situation. You don’t need to minimise what happened, nor do you need to turn your departure into a public reckoning. Leave in a way that is consistent with the standards you want to be known for.
Be careful, too, about the story you tell yourself afterwards. As I explored in the first article, we’re not always reliable narrators of our own ethical behaviour. Consequently, it can be tempting to reshape a departure into something cleaner and more heroic than it actually was.
Where This Leaves You
Across this series of three articles, the challenge has moved from recognising your ethical line, to holding it when it’s tested, to deciding what that line ultimately requires of you.
There won’t always be an obvious right answer, and the decision won’t likely be easy to make. You may stay with clear boundaries, take the issue further, decide you can no longer remain or something else.
What matters is that you make the choice consciously, deliberately and wisely. Knowing who you are and what you stand for only matters if you’re prepared to act on that ethical line when you reach it.
Getting you ready for tomorrow, today®
Award-winning author and global workplace expert, Dr Michelle Gibbings, helps leaders, teams and organisations unlock strategic influence to accelerate progress.
References:
- Hirschman, A. O. (1970). Exit, voice, and loyalty: Responses to decline in firms, organizations, and states. Harvard University Press.
- Rusbult, C. E., Farrell, D., Rogers, G., & Mainous, A. G., III. (1988). Impact of exchange variables on exit, voice, loyalty, and neglect: An integrative model of responses to declining job satisfaction. Academy of Management Journal, 31(3), 599–627.
- Jameton, A. (1993). Dilemmas of moral distress: Moral responsibility and nursing practice. AWHONN’s Clinical Issues in Perinatal and Women’s Health Nursing, 4(4), 542–551.
- Epstein, E. G., & Hamric, A. B. (2009). Moral distress, moral residue, and the crescendo effect. The Journal of Clinical Ethics, 20(4), 330–342.