Moral Conflicts: Your Resolve Under Pressure

There are many situations at work where what you need to do or what you mustn’t do is both clear-cut and obvious. Most of the time you get paid to do the right thing, and your role involves you in determining what the right course of action is in any situation before implementing it. However, sometimes what your managers, other colleagues, and from time to time clients, expect of you isn’t in line with either your own values, or on occasion the law. In some of these cases your boss, your co-workers, or your customers might want you to behave in ways that conflict with your values, your natural, innate sense of the difference between right and wrong, or your sense of what is the best course of action for your team or organization. Responding to these situations means building influence with difficult and often more senior colleagues in situations where you need to protect your core values, and where you are being pressurized into taking actions with which you fundamentally disagree. These are the issues that this chapter will address.