ethical choices

What would you do if doing the right thing might cost you your job? Early in my career, I faced an ethical dilemma involving a lucrative contract and a client who wanted us to deliberately make legal evidence difficult to find. We walked away from the opportunity, and I’ve never regretted that decision. But one question has stayed with me. What would I have done if the company’s owner had disagreed?

That experience got me thinking about the choices we make when we’re convinced we’re right. Sometimes the stakes are high, involving our livelihood or our principles. More often, they show up in everyday conversations, little white lies, and disagreements where our desire to win gets the better of our judgment. The Stoics understood that knowing what’s right is only part of the challenge. How we act on that knowledge matters just as much.

In You Can Be Right and Still Handle Something Badly, I explore the sometimes uncomfortable distance between our convictions and our conduct. Drawing on Stoic wisdom, a lesson from my professional life, and a little honest self-examination, I consider what it means to act with integrity when circumstances test us. And I leave readers with a question worth considering before their next difficult conversation. When you’re certain you’re right, will you also be proud of how you behaved?