Peter was not a sexist—not in his own eyes, and not (as far as he could tell) in the eyes of his female colleagues. Heading a laboratory specializing in the analysis of hazardous waste, he employed both female and male professionals. Chemistry had always seemed perfectly gender-neutral to him: He knew plenty of women who were excellent scientists and laboratory technicians, and it had really never occurred to him to discriminate.
But in the mid-1980s his company asked him to set up a special laboratory to deal with one of the nastiest and most toxic substances known at the time: dioxin. Using all the standard precautions and then some, he established a very promising operation. Only in one area did he depart from orthodox procedures: Deliberately, he sought to hire chemists who either were males or were females over childbearing age. The reason: The best literature of the day suggested that mothers exposed to dioxin experienced a higher-than-usual incidence of spontaneous abortions, birth defects, and neurological disorders in the children they bore. The studies all focused on women: Peter found nothing in the literature to suggest that exposure by men led to deformities in the children they subsequently fathered.
Coming as it did on the heels of extensive publicity about the dioxin contamination of Times Beach, Missouri, in 1982—a town evacuated at the recommendation of the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta—the establishment of the lab proved to be the right thing at the right time. It was clearly a success. Then one day Peter was informed that a bright young scientist from another division of the company had requested a transfer into his lab. There was only one problem: Camille, the scientist, was a married woman in her late twenties. She was scheduled to leave the company in the next six months to further her education. Meanwhile, she very much wanted a stint in the dioxin lab for the sake of her résumé: There were few women with such backgrounds, and she felt this experience could significantly help her career.
Somewhat warily, Peter invited Camille for an interview. Trying to be as delicate as possible—to elicit information without asking unduly personal questions—he discovered that she did indeed intend to have children. He also learned that she was adamant in her insistence on working in his lab—and that she was prepared to take legal action against the lab if he did not hire her. Other than the gender issue, Peter could see no reason to refuse her: Given her excellent record, she was just the kind of employee Peter would ordinarily love to attract to his team.
The dilemma, for Peter, arose out of his core values. Deep in his conscience were two things he cared dearly about. One was the sense of gender equity, coupled with a deeply held belief that mature, thinking adults like Camille ought to be allowed to make their own decisions. The other was a profound concern for the sanctity of life—the very feeling that had impelled him into environmental work in the first place—coupled with a special sense of care for infants and small children who depend on the decision-making of adults. On one hand, he knew he should give Camille the job, not only for the sake of her own interests but to further erode the gender barrier. On the other, he knew he should prevent her from perhaps causing irreparable harm to her children for the sake of immediate professional gain. Both impulses, he felt, were right. But he couldn’t do both.
Nor was Camille inclined to help him in his decision-making. She made it clear that, were she not hired, she would sue the company for discrimination. Yet if he did hire her, and if her children subsequently suffered deformities, he also knew the company could be legally liable for failing to protect her. The lab took stringent measures to ensure the safety of its workers. But was he certain they were enough? Dioxin was a new chemical; how could anyone be sure? He was sure, however, that there was no legal document she could be asked to sign that would absolve the lab of its responsibility for her and her children’s safety.
Either way, the company was over a legal barrel.
In the end, Peter refused to approve her transfer—insisting that, if she were to join his lab, the move would have to be authorized over his head. Ultimately, the company president approved her transfer. And she proved to be very good: She did excellent work, liked her job, and left as planned after six months.
Were there any later complications? None that Peter knew of. But he did learn—as the nation has since learned—more about dioxin. The latest research suggests that it is not nearly as toxic as once thought, that the shutdown and disincorporation of Times Beach may in fact, have been unnecessary, and that a chemical once identified by the Environmental Protection Agency as “the most toxic man-made chemical” is in fact only a weak carcinogen. That doesn’t mean it’s harmless: It was dioxin poisoning that apparently disfigured the former president of Ukraine, Viktor Yushchenko in 2004. But the exposures needed to cause such damage—said to be as much as six thousand times above normal levels in Yushchenko’s case—were beyond anything Peter could have contemplated in his laboratory.
Do Men and Women Have Different Moralities?
Ever since Kohlberg constructed his stages of moral development based on studies of boys (see box on Chapter 2), questions have arisen from female researchers about the validity of his work. Do women develop moral judgment in different ways?
To find out, educational psychologist Carol Gilligan conducted in-depth interviews for three different projects—with 25 college students, then with 29 women contemplating abortion, and finally with 144 men and women in nine age brackets from six to sixty. Her aim, she writes in In a Different Voice, was to understand “women’s identity formation and their moral development in adolescence and adulthood.”
Her book is a rich and honest tapestry of analytical discussion interwoven with the narrative voices of her subjects, and it suggests multiple conclusions. Among them:
The contrast to Kohlberg is instructive. To be moral, for Kohlberg, is to rise to the sixth stage of development, a moral consciousness that adheres to justice and equality based on universal moral principles. From the perspective of the women Gilligan interviewed, by contrast, “a moral person is one who helps others; goodness is service, meeting one’s obligations and responsibilities to others, if possible without sacrificing oneself.”
None of that information, however, had yet come to light. Because he was acting on the best information available to him, and because his own core values were so strong, Peter faced an ethical dilemma of the right-versus-right sort.
His dilemma lends itself to analysis from the perspective of the four paradigms introduced in chapter 1:
The names used here are less important than the concepts:
Call them what you will, these four patterns help us describe the basic issues at the heart of so many ethical conflicts—the clashing of core values that makes it hard for good people to make tough choices.
That clashing of values constitutes a dilemma. Here several definitions are in order—not to prescribe, restrict, or discount other definitions, but simply to clarify ways in which these words can be most helpful. To deal in ethics, after all, is to deal largely in the ways we talk to each other: The problem, as one of T. S. Eliot’s characters spluttered in a moment of verbal frustration, is that “I’ve gotta use words when I talk to you.” Indeed so. If ethics seems at times fuzzy around the edges, part of the problem lies in our definitions. The answer does not lie, as I’ve argued above, in intense exercises at razor-sharp definitional distinction. But neither does it lie in vagueness—particularly about such words as dilemma. The word is from the Greek: The prefix di- means “two,” and the word lemma means “a fundamental proposition, a basic assumption taken for granted.” While popularly used to describe a situation posing two unpleasant or negative alternatives, the original meaning of dilemma carries no negative connotations. As the word is used here, it describes any situation that pits one deeply held lemma against another. I use the term ethical dilemma, then, to stand for those right-versus-right situations where two core moral values come into conflict—distinguishing such dilemmas from the right-versus-wrong issues that produce what can usefully be called moral temptations.
The other term needing a word of definition is paradigm, from the Greek prefix para-, meaning “beyond” or “aside from,” and deigma, meaning “example.” The word literally means “pattern” or “model.” It is typically used to describe an overall concept, framework, or thought process that is widely accepted (especially in intellectual communities) as an effective way to explain complex phenomena or sets of data. Animals facing winter, for instance, can be categorized through several paradigms, one of which is migration. This paradigm, drawn literally from the concept of a group of people leaving one homeland for another, helps us make sense of a great variety of observations concerning birds, mammals, fish, butterflies, and even retired Americans with homes in Florida. By extension, it also lets us talk about the movement of ions toward an electrode and the shifting of atoms from one position in the molecule to another. What connects all these things? Not their particular details: ions, hummingbirds, Floridians, and refugees don’t seem, on the surface, to have much in common. Here, as elsewhere, the paradigm emerges only as we strip away particulars and get down to central ideas—in this case, an idea regarding the movement of groups.
So it is with our dilemma paradigms. What helps us classify our dilemmas into four sets has little to do with the descriptive elements of the experience. It is not the presence of dioxin in Peter’s story that helps us spot the most relevant paradigm, nor is it the fact that he is a scientist, nor even that his problem arises from a legal issue concerning potential gender discrimination. No, what matters here are the core values that drive his decision-making. To see what they are, try running his story through the four paradigms:
On the other hand, his sense of mercy urges him to sit down with her and try to talk her out of her decision—not for his sake, nor even for her sake, but for the sake of those yet to be born. His compassion and respect for life finally drive him to take a stand that is professionally difficult, surely unpopular, and probably illegal. How much easier, after all, simply to go with the flow, hire her, and hope for the best. That would not be “wrong.” It’s just that his conscience wouldn’t let him do it: Following what he sees as the dictates of compassion, he can’t take her into the dioxin lab.
This paradigm illustrates something else as well: Dilemmas have actors. For Peter, the short-term-versus-long-term paradigm might not seem as powerful as its justice-versus-mercy counterpart. If we take Camille as the actor, however, the situation changes. Justice versus mercy doesn’t seem to fit: Because she has no reason to see the situation in that light, she’s not torn between a sense of fairness and a feeling of love. But she is caught on the horns of a short-term/long-term tension, just as he is. Her own best interests in the immediate future might well be to put “dioxin experience” on her resume. But should she trade that advantage for the prospect of caring for a deformed child in the long-term future—a child who could conceivably require so much attention that she might no longer be able to work as a chemist at all? Or is that “prospect” overly remote in the face of available facts? All of us balance risks against benefits every day, and we often choose to endure certain levels of risk in the foods we eat, the cars we drive, the places we work, and in dozens of other ways. Is this any different?
Notice that the assessment of risk turns on a crucial factor: knowledge. To the extent that Camille is an expert chemist, she possesses that knowledge. She is fully capable of rendering professional judgments on the probability of her coming into contact with toxic substances—and finding ways to protect herself with everything from specially designed hoods to cutting-edge robotics. But Peter, too, is a chemist, and has his own set of professional judgments. In this case, they both got it wrong—Peter for thinking that dioxin was deadly rather than just toxic, and Camille for thinking that experience with it would matter greatly on her resume (which might no longer be the case as dioxin loses its “most dangerous toxin” status). The point is that the resolution of dilemmas often depends on the knowledge we have—a subject we’ll revisit later in more depth.
This paradigm, while it fits, seems less helpful than the earlier ones. Why? In part, I think, because the process of analysis reveals that neither side of the “self” argument—avoiding entanglement by simply going with the flow and hiring her, or avoiding long-term legal hassles by not hiring her—rings with the true metal of high moral character. In the end, they both strike us as overly selfish, rather than genuinely self-aware and self-interested.
Should it worry us that, when this self-versus-community paradigm is applied, the two sides can be argued in such different ways? Not really. The purpose of analyzing dilemmas through these paradigms is not to resolve them at this point. That comes later, through the application of our three decision-making rules discussed in chapter 7. At this stage we’re simply trying to understand the fundamental core values that are in conflict—so that when we finally apply the resolution rules, the conflict needing resolution will have been stated as clearly as possible and will stand out in bold relief.
And that’s an important point. One clear value of paradigm analysis lies in its ability to help us distinguish right-versus-right dilemmas from right-versus-wrong temptations—as the following example makes plain.
Randy, an American living in the capital city of a South American country, managed one division of the Latin American office of a multinational manufacturing corporation. Like many South American nations, this one was eager to develop its own domestic electronics industry. So far, the quality of this fledgling industry’s products had been very poor. To protect it, the government had slapped high tariffs, ranging up to 100 percent of the value, on imports of computer equipment. It was widely known, however, that this nation’s customs officials were grossly underpaid and were given great freedom to collect bribes as a means of supplementing their incomes.
As he prepared for a vacation with his family back to the United States, Randy was approached by his boss and given an assignment. His office, which frequently made sales presentations, needed a high-quality color printer to prepare sharp-looking documents. The boss, from looking at catalogues put out by U.S. firms, knew exactly the printer he wanted and how much it should cost. So he asked Randy to buy one and bring it back with him on the plane. He also asked him to buy a couple of bottles of expensive whiskey to use as bribes at customs. He assured Randy that he would be reimbursed for whatever he spent—happily so, since even the most expensive liquor would cost but a fraction of what he would otherwise pay in duty.
What should Randy do? Does he buy and bring in the printer, or doesn’t he?
As you run this example through the paradigms, you may notice something peculiar. The paradigms don’t really seem to fit. It’s easy to see that the self (or the small group constituting the firm) and the community (or the larger group comprising the nation) have differing claims. But it’s hard to see that there are “right” claims on both sides. Nor does this seem to be a justice-versus-mercy challenge or a short-term/long-term standoff. The closest candidate might seem to be truth versus loyalty, where loyalty to his boss would urge him to buy the printer while truth would urge him to obey the law. But how, then, do you articulate the two rights here? Is it “right” to break the law? From a Yankee perspective, these laws may seem unjust. But is that sufficient reason to flout them? To be sure, there are cases where lawbreaking may be in order, as in civil disobedience. But Randy was apparently not willing to break the law openly and go to jail for his beliefs; and he surely was not interested in bribing the customs officials in the full glare of publicity, so that all could see what he was doing.
In fact, it’s difficult to see this case as a situation of right versus right—for the simple reason that it’s probably not. Many observers, looking in from outside in an unbiased way and with no self-interests at stake, would classify this case as right versus wrong. Moral courage, they would say, compels Randy to find a way to refuse to carry out his boss’s request—to do what’s honest even when asked to do what’s expedient. Our efforts to apply the paradigms will often alert us early on to a right-versus-wrong issue: If no paradigm fits, the reason may be that it’s not an ethical dilemma at all, but simply a moral temptation.
With that as background, let’s look more deeply into the first of our four right-versus-right paradigms, truth versus loyalty.
Truth, to most people, is conformity with facts or reality. Loyalty involves allegiance to a person, a government, or a set of ideas to which one owes fidelity. Those are deceptively simple definitions. But they are valuable insofar as they distinguish between the objective and the subjective, the idea of a reality apart from an observer’s bias versus the concept of a personal feeling of attachment that depends on the presence of a personality. It is in this tension between the objective and the subjective that some of our most piercing dilemmas arise.
But what is truth? The question is perennial. “This is why I came into the world, to bear testimony to the truth,” Jesus explained. “Truth!” Pilate snorted. “What does truth mean?” Jesus assumed, apparently, that his hearers understood there to be such a thing as truth. Pilate challenged that very assumption, and philosophers before and after him have grappled with the implications of his question. Is there an objective truth? Or is truth only what we make of it? Even quantum mechanics takes up the query, describing an observer-created reality that effectively voids the distinction between objective and subjective.
Pilate’s question is intricate, fascinating, and complex. For those wanting to pursue some practical form of ethical fitness and resolve day-to-day dilemmas, however, it may not require deep attention. If we are struggling to resolve a truth-versus-loyalty dilemma, it is probably not because we are engaging in profound epistemological ruminations about whether or not there is any such thing as truth. It is probably because we see fairly clearly that truth, which means this, tells us to act one way—while loyalty, which means that, urges us to go another way.
Then what does truth mean in the everyday experience where dilemmas arise? It is true, we say, that I’ve been to town today—if in fact I’ve moved myself physically into a nearby municipality smaller than a city. But what if I’ve simply walked up the road to get some milk from the rural grocery store? If my wife and I understand “town” to mean any place where I can get needed supplies, then I’m truthful if I tell her I’ve been there. I might, nevertheless, be challenged in court if it were proved that I said I went to town when in fact I went only to the local store.
Truth in human experience, then, turns in great part on what we all agree to be truth. It is, as Walter Lippmann quoted approvingly from Charles S. Pierce, “the opinion which is fated to be ultimately agreed to by all those who investigate.” Such agreements can depend entirely on language. In saying that water is wet, wood comes from trees, and ants are insects, we are making statements that are true simply by definition: That’s what we mean when we say “wet,” “tree,” or “insect.” But most agreed-upon truths go beyond the definitional and depend on our knowledge of the world around us. We gain this knowledge in several ways. Much of it comes from empirical investigation, meaning that it’s founded not on assumption, guesswork, or opinion but on experiment or experience growing out of the observation of phenomena. Some of it may come through intuition or feelings. And some may come from logical deduction based on what we take to be overriding realities. So if we say that the car needs fixing because it wobbles when we drive it, we hold that to be a true statement based on experience. We may also observe that we won’t have it fixed over at Harry’s service station, since he’s a sleazy glad-hander who talks a good game but doesn’t know much about cars—a statement given such wide credence in town, especially among those who’ve taken their cars to Harry’s, that it’s generally seen as “true.” We may also say that every time we wash the car it rains—a statement based more on superstition than careful record-keeping, but so clearly congruent with our recent experience that we let it stand as the truth.
In practice, the truth that most often figures in truth-versus-loyalty dilemmas is based on accurate reporting of the world around us in terms that most would use to report it themselves. Typically, the world gets misreported in three ways. When we say things happened that did not, we are not being accurate. When we deliver only partial accounts that hide salient details, we are not being complete. And when we obscure an important truth with other truths that miss the mark, we are not being relevant. The laws of evidence require that we be accurate, complete, and relevant—a set of characteristics familiarly summarized in the courtroom query “Do you swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth?” Truth, then, is reflected in our statements about the world. But “when we undertake to deceive others intentionally,” writes Sissela Bok in her masterful book, Lying: Moral Choice in Public and Private Life, “we communicate messages meant to mislead them, meant to make them believe what we ourselves do not believe.” She goes on to define a lie as “any intentionally deceptive message which is stated.” Her definition provides a useful test, in fact, for the application of this truth-versus-loyalty paradigm: If the dilemma arises in our experience because we are asked to make statements that violate truth, the truth-versus-loyalty paradigm is probably relevant.
For many people, this truth-versus-loyalty paradigm will seem the central issue on the ethical horizon—perhaps the only one. Ethics, they will say, is all about truth-telling: With it, you have the essence of a moral life, and without it there is no hope for ethics. Bok’s insights support the latter claim. The effect of truth-telling, she says, is to promote trust, without which there is no possibility of a moral society. “Trust in some degree of veracity,” she writes, “functions as a foundation of relations among human beings; when this trust shatters or wears away, institutions collapse.” Yet while truth-telling is indeed a sine qua non of an ethical life, it is not the whole of it. Frank and brutal truth-telling can accompany murderous tyrannies, loveless marriages, unjust societies, and irresponsible apathies.
Loyalty, by contrast, focuses not on statements of fact but on perceptions of allegiance—“the willing and complete identification of his whole self with his cause,” as the philosopher Josiah Royce defined it. It may arise for reasons that are monetary (he pays me, so I’m loyal to him), or emotional (she’s the love of my life), or tribal (he’s one of us), or political (he represents my ideas in the legislature), or intellectual (I’m convinced that the earth orbits the sun, and will not even investigate alternative explanations), or in various other ways. But it typically involves a fidelity to a person or concept that is sufficiently strong to resist the intrusion of contrary opinions or facts. It requires, as George P. Fletcher writes in Loyalty: An Essay on the Morality of Relationships, “the rejection of alternatives” that would undermine the loyal relationship. “Some of the strongest moral epithets in the English language,” Fletcher observes, “are reserved for the weak who cannot meet the threshold of loyalty: They commit adultery, betrayal, treason. At its best, loyalty accounts for the patriotism that caused colonists during the American Revolution to give their lives for the infant idea of a new nation, and for the heroism that still causes individuals to endanger themselves to save others during hurricanes and floods. In its middle ranges, it can keep marriages together even in the absence of love, keep children caring for aging parents who are difficult and ungrateful, keep an employee hanging on to an unpleasant job until someone can be hired to take his or her place. At its worst, loyalty accounts for some of the most horrifying excesses of the century, perpetrated by those with allegiance to Hitler, Mao, Stalin, Saddam Hussein, and so forth. But it typically involves some component of responsibility, dedication, and honor. It also involves some recognition that there are obligations, even of the most elusive sort, that must be fulfilled.
Then is it truly a “right” quality? Many say yes. A 2000 survey by the Ethics Resource Center found that 79 percent of those agreed with the statement, “My organization’s concern for ethics and doing the right thing is an important reason that I continue to work here.” This dynamic in the workforce, not surprisingly, works both ways: Any company that wants to keep its employees should hold fast to its ethical principles, and any person wanting a morally satisfying career should seek out firms that are ethically fit. Clearly, then, loyalty matters—which is why truth-versus-loyalty dilemmas are not simply matters of right versus wrong.
To see why, take another example—one drawn from a survey done for the Girl Scouts in 1989 by the Lewis Harris Organization. There, five thousand children from elementary through high school were asked to respond to various hypothetical situations. One was as follows: Your best friend has just bragged to you about vandalizing the school building. The next day the principal asks you point-blank, “Did your friend do it?” What do you say?
Most respondents—you can almost see them squirming in their desk chairs over the question—said they would lie to protect their friends. And most adults, looking at the results, are appalled that the majority of these kids are willing to lie. But the problem is more complicated than that. Ever since these children have been able to walk and talk, they’ve been told one way or another that loyalty is a very good thing and that they must be loyal to their friends. Yet in almost the same breath they’ve been instructed that truth-telling is very important and that they must never lie. This situation puts them squarely into a right-versus-right dilemma of the truth-versus-loyalty sort. There are ways to help them sort it out, of course: You can help the older ones, at least, understand that some of the worst crimes of this century have been committed by people who put military loyalty above objective truth. But you won’t sort out this dilemma by pretending it doesn’t exist. The principal who tells the child, “Don’t you know loyalty is a terrible thing, and that you should always tell the truth?” flies in the face of one of that child’s most salient convictions, which is that loyalty is not a bad thing, and that there may be times when you had best not blurt out all the truth.
If that sounds like thinly veiled ethical relativism, consider the following case. You’re a European aid worker stationed in Khartoum, Sudan, during the war in Darfur when, on March 4, 2009, the International Criminal Court orders the arrest of President Omar Hassan al-Bashir for atrocities committed in Darfur. As Sudanese officials order Western aid groups to shut down operations and immediately leave the country, a crowd of demonstrators supporting the president gathers in central Khartoum. As the protest grows increasingly angry, your Sudanese friends take great pains to hide you in their house not far from the capitol. Then there’s a knock, and your friends open the door. “Do you have any Westerners hiding in your house?” they are asked. Hearing the question, you fervently hope they will put loyalty above truth—at least this once.
Have they done wrong in telling a lie? Few would say yes. In fact, this situation opens up higher realms of philosophical inquiry, in which arguments can be made that your friends’ answer, while appearing untruthful in its immediate context, actually maintained a greater truth by saving a life. Does truth require you to answer accurately every question, especially when the purpose of the questioner is to harm the innocent? Does truth-telling, in other words, always serve the ends of truth? It is not necessary to drive this argument into such realms of metaphysics, or to quibble over fine meanings of the word truth in order to observe that there are indeed circumstances—usefully summarized under the heading of “loyalty”—where the immediately apparent claims of truth-telling may be less right than some higher formulation of truth. Questions of harsh, frightening, or harmful bluntness also fall into this category, as Emily Dickinson makes clear in her poem beginning, “Tell all the Truth but tell it slant”:
As Lightning to the Children eased
With explanation kind
The Truth must dazzle gradually
Or every man be blind—
Being truthful is one thing. Telling all the truth on every occasion, however, is something else.
So how in practice does this truth-versus-loyalty paradigm operate? Consider the following three examples:
One day, to Cal’s deep dismay, he hears that Harry has been implicated in some financial irregularities at work. The issues, while serious, leave room for doubt: There is reason to think Harry got ensnared by regulations, though he may afterward have tried to cover up that entanglement by being less than forthright. Yet after what Cal observes to be a careful audit and investigation, Harry is let go from his job.
Coming to Cal, he asks for a letter of reference.
What is Cal to do? Truth compels him to describe Harry as financially risky—a label that will be difficult if not impossible to shake off in the business world and could prevent Harry from ever holding another responsible job. Loyalty urges him to focus on the many other strong characteristics that he knows Harry to possess and to downplay the financial issues. Both are right, and he cannot do both.
For some months the talks between the organizations continued, with the president as the chief negotiator for Andrew’s side. The board of directors was kept aware of the activity. As the situation seemed to be approaching a decision point, however, the board got cold feet and one day instructed the president to cease and desist in his negotiations, explaining that from now on all contacts with the other organization should flow through the board.
Several days later, the president told Andrew he had invited the senior officers from the other loan organization to town for a day-long site visit, where they could examine the loan files and learn about the procedures of this organization. Andrew was taken aback: Was not this in direct violation, he asked, of the board’s directive? The president admitted it was, but asserted that he was tired of being run around by the board. He told Andrew that he was going ahead with plans for what seemed to him a very good merger, not only for the two organizations but for the client base they served. And he asked Andrew to be present for the day-long meeting.
Andrew’s initial dilemma was clear. As an appointee of the board, he had more than the usual commitment of a number two to an organization’s governing board. Yet he knew that, were he to cross the president on such a matter, his tenure in the organization could be short-lived. What’s more, he liked and respected the president. What to do?
He explained to the president that, while he did not feel he could stand in his way, his conscience would not let him participate. So they agreed that he should work at home on the day of the visit. The day came, and Andrew was at home, when, early in the afternoon, the phone rang. It was the chairman of the board, who asked why Andrew was at home.
Now the dilemma was immediate. It was right, Andrew knew, to support his president, show the kind of loyalty that he knew the president would show him in similar circumstances, and not play the tattletale. And, it would have been easy to create an explanation that was acceptable and unrevealing—pleading, for example, a health-related problem. Yet it was right to tell the truth—especially when the question was a legitimate one, coming from an individual who had every right to know what was happening.
Some months later, a young woman May did not know came in for counseling after having contracted a sexually transmitted disease. In their discussion, the client revealed the name of her boyfriend. To May’s astonishment, it turned out to be her own former boyfriend—a fact apparently unknown to the young woman.
May’s dilemma: Does she maintain her professional demeanor and give no hint that she knows anything about the man? Or does she warn the young woman of what she knows?
On one hand, it is right to do the former. Her loyalty to her profession requires her to avoid personal involvement with her clients and to provide them with objective counsel untainted by bias of any sort. That requirement seems even more compelling where powerful feelings are involved. Were May to reveal her own past relationship with the man, she might raise serious questions in the mind of her client about her reasons for doing so—including, perhaps, a suspicion that she was seeking vengeance on her former lover by trying, possibly through false accusation, to destroy his current relationship.
Yet it is also right to warn the client of something May knows, almost certainly, to be the truth: This man, in her professional opinion, is dangerous to the health of her client. Were her client alerted, she could avoid further infection from other diseases. The truth, coupled with her deep compassion for her fellow beings, urges her to tell the client what she knows and prevent further suffering—something she would do in any other human situation where speaking up about dangers could save lives. Can there ever be any reason, she asks herself, not to tell a lifesaving truth for another’s benefit?
As these three dilemmas show, truth-versus-loyalty dilemmas are familiar to us all. While they may not always rise to the levels of complexity and tension suggested here, they turn up frequently in our experience, especially at those points where honesty is at issue. They are just the sort of examples that cry out for an application of the resolution principles. Before turning to these principles, however, we need to consider the three remaining dilemma paradigms. Then we need to ask why we’ve found only four.