As a police commissioner once said when he rejected the 20th bribe offer he had received that day: “Ethics are not easy!” We all face those times when doing the right thing is very different from doing the easy thing or what would be more profitable. That is one of the reasons a company has a mission statement and / or a code of conduct: so that employees understand what is expected of them when faced with the choice between the right or the easy, the ethical and profitability.

The problem is that many options fall in the middle gray area! What do you do when ethical choice will surely hurt someone? What if doing something a little wrong helps create a really big “right”? Take a few minutes to read the examples below and answer the questions they pose, and you will see what I mean.

• Your coworker asks you to cover for him so he can sneak out of work early to go to his son’s softball game. Do you agree? If he were anyway, would you stay silent?

• You are about to sign a major new client with a contract worth more than $ 50,000. Your boss is under a lot of pressure to increase sales. He calls him into his office and tells him that his job is at stake, and asks him to include his contract income in the sales figures for the quarter ending tomorrow. You know the contract is secure, but the client is out of town and cannot sign it tomorrow. What is your job?

• The cost of manufacturing the widgets that your company makes has been reduced by 50%. One of his customers, Sam, tells him that he knows because he is best friends with the VP of production at his company and asks him for a discount on his order. Your boss approves the discount. Her other customer, Sue (who is one of her best friends and knows nothing about falling manufacturing costs) orders the exact same widget order as Sam. Do you offer a similar discount? Are you talking about falling manufacturing costs?

• Company policy prohibits co-workers from being romantically involved. You go to the same church as someone from another department and you are attracted to this person. Are you pursuing the relationship?

• Your best friend is the vice president of one of the companies your company does business with. You take her out to lunch just to catch up on personal things and pay the bill. Do you declare this a “business lunch” and submit the receipt for reimbursement?

• While in the bathroom, you hear your boss tell a colleague that Bob will be fired at the end of the term, in about two weeks. Bob is a good friend of yours. Do you tell him?

• One of the newer salespeople in his division is a real fool, never gets to work on time, distracts other people with his antics, and so on. You complain about him to your boss, who tells you that the boy is the son of the president of the company. Your boss instructs you not only to leave the new guy alone, but also to make your sales figures look good by throwing some obvious bills at him. What is your job?

Now just in case you feel very virtuous because to know would always make the ethical decision in those cases, ask yourself:

have you ever

… did you lie to your mother? your boss? the IRS?

… lied so as not to hurt someone’s feelings?

… lied to get out of a business or social engagement?

… taken a questionable deduction on your income tax?

… modified figures in a report to make the results look better?

… took a sick day when you were not sick?

… lied to a customer (“we shipped your order yesterday”) or to the creditor (“the check is in the mail”)?

… take shortcuts in quality control?

… blamed someone else for something that you knew you were partially responsible for?

… used one of these phrases: “Everybody does it”, “It’s the lesser of two evils”, “It’s just a little white lie”, “It doesn’t hurt anyone”, “Who will know?”

… exerts inappropriate pressure on others?

In the real world, “ethics are not easy.” Somehow we have to come up with a way to look at even the most complicated situations and evaluate them by taking into account what is correct, not what will cause the least problem. We need a foundation on which to build the kind of success that feels good because we know that what we are doing represents us at our best.