How Good People End Up in Bad Situations

There’s a moment in every workplace where someone asks you to do something that isn’t quite right. Maybe it’s a minor favor, a slight bending of the rules, nothing too serious. A colleague is in a tough spot, a boss is under pressure, and suddenly, what’s ethical starts feeling a little flexible. It’s just one email, one report, and one overlooked policy. No one’s getting hurt.

That’s how it starts.

It’s never some dramatic scene where you stand at the crossroads, one path leading to justice, the other to moral ruin. No ominous music plays. A manager just emailed asking if you can “tweak” the numbers to look better for the board meeting. Just a quiet moment when you realize that someone else’s work somehow became your boss’s work in the quarterly review, and everyone expects you to be a team player about it.

One day, it’s helping a colleague fudge a deadline. The next, you’re sitting in a meeting watching an executive explain to the media that the company takes these allegations seriously, hoping no one finds the internal emails that say otherwise. The real problem isn’t that one ethical compromise. It’s that once the line moves, it keeps moving.

Ask anyone who used to work at Theranos. It started with a few overly optimistic claims about their technology. Then came the creative test results. Then suddenly, federal agents were involved, and people who once just wanted to help “push innovation forward” tried explaining why they knowingly sent fake lab results to doctors.

The same thing happened at Wells Fargo when employees, under pressure to meet impossible quotas, started opening fake accounts in customers’ names. At first, it was just a few. Then, it was thousands. Then, it was millions. Then, there was a $3 billion settlement, public outrage, and many former employees saying they were following orders.

And let’s not forget the fine folks at Boeing. There was a time when the company was a gold standard for safety. But cutting a few corners here, skipping a few tests there, and soon enough, two planes were in the ocean, and the CEO was apologizing before Congress. All because people went along to get along.

The tricky part is that, at first, compromise doesn’t feel like a big deal. Maybe you’re even helping someone. A colleague is in trouble, a boss needs a favor, a friend asks for a small thing. But the problem with a slippery slope is that no one thinks they’re on one until they’re at the bottom.

People assume they’ll recognize when things go too far, that there will be a clear sign when they should speak up. There won’t be. There never is. When you realize you’re in too deep, someone else is already making your decisions.

I recall being at a higher education institution in another state when the president decided we would take the money NASA was giving us and put it into the university budget to balance it. While the rest of the cabinet favored it, I spoke out against it, noting the federal regulations that this would violate and the consequences. Strangely enough, my contract was not renewed.

If history has taught us anything, the people who stay silent or go along with bad decisions rarely get away clean. Enron collapsed, but not before ruining thousands of lives. Volkswagen thought no one would notice they were rigging emissions tests. They noticed.

Those who walked away with their reputations intact weren’t the ones who played along. They were the ones who refused, even when it cost them. That’s the thing about ethics. It’s not supposed to be easy.

So, pay attention if you find yourself in a moment where something doesn’t feel right. The people who end up in handcuffs, courtrooms, or disastrous career spirals all have one thing in common: they thought they were helping out at some point.