by Rushworth M. Kidder

If a thing is wrong, is it ever right to do it?

Sure, for a short time.

If that sounds like a stand-up comedy routine, consider Laverne’s story. A well-educated woman with an engineering background, Laverne (not her real name) works for the federal government in Washington, analyzing threats to the nation’s security. Several years ago, she also agreed to mentor a young woman newly appointed to her department — a task she looked forward to doing.

But the mentor-mentee relationship never quite gelled. The young woman, while perfectly civil, seemed disinterested. Laverne offered various ways to help, but there was little reciprocity. Puzzled by the non-response, but wanting to be a responsible mentor, she kept hoping for a breakthrough.

Early one Monday morning, Laverne told me, it happened. She had just arrived at work when her mentee asked if they could talk. “Oh, good!” Laverne thought to herself, “finally!” What followed, however, was nothing she could have expected.

The young woman told her that a cousin had arrived unexpectedly at her apartment on Sunday morning and asked to spend the night. The reason: on Saturday he’d killed a man, and fled in fright.

The killing sounded to the young woman like an act of self-defense, though she wasn’t sure. The only thing she knew for certain was that he was a fugitive from justice, and that by the time she left for work that morning he was gone. Her question to Laverne: What should she do?

It was clear to Laverne that her mentee was facing a lot of wrongdoing. It was wrong for the cousin to kill and then flee the scene. And it was wrong for her to harbor a felon. The young woman knew that her position as a federal employee required her to report any crimes she knew had been committed. While there were strong ties between her and her cousin, the horrifying truth of the situation trumped any claim of familial loyalty. Ethically, as well as legally, this was a slam-dunk case of right versus wrong.

But what about Laverne? She found herself facing a right-versus-right dilemma, not about whether to report — she knew that had to happen — but about how to work through the situation with her mentee. Laverne told me her own tendency as an engineer was to see everything, including ethics, as black and white. So her impulse within the first minute of hearing about the killing was to reach for the phone, report the case, and make sure justice got done.

But Laverne also explained that her mother was a counselor. As a child, she said, it drove her nuts when she would go to her mother with a problem and be asked to consider all of the angles, decide what options she had, and work out the best resolution. Yet on that Monday morning she heard herself asking those very questions of her mentee — first, of course, to be sure the cousin’s story wasn’t fabricated, and then to help determine the best way forward. They talked for several hours, she said, before they jointly called the authorities.

In this justice-versus-mercy dilemma, was this the right outcome? Had Laverne reported the case within the first minutes, she might have saved the police several crucial hours. But to her mentee, that might have seemed an exceptionally hard-hearted act — a betrayal, in fact, of the mentor-mentee relationship that, despite its undeveloped state, had been promised by the department. In the young woman’s mind, this was not a serial killer who needed to be stopped instantly before he struck again. This was a confused, frightened young man who needed to be found and returned.

But how much did either of them know about the young man? If every hour made the case more challenging for the police, how long could Laverne justify a delay before she, too, became complicit in harboring a felon? If, as the wise adage puts it, justice delayed is justice denied, when does delay become denial? That Monday morning in Laverne’s office, what was going on — true compassion or mere procrastination?

The question is not unimportant. In so many ranges of our ethical experience, these two can look alike. Ethics is not only about whether something must be done; it’s about how and when it gets done. Clearly, it’s wrong to leave the right thing undone. We sometimes forget, however, that the right thing done in the wrong way can become the wrong thing.

What happened? The mentee felt well treated, and afterwards seemed to move forward in her work without difficulty. Laverne continued as her mentor until the younger woman was transferred to another department. But while the relationship improved, the two never became close. Laverne hasn’t been in touch with her since she left.

Had Laverne the engineer instantly picked up the phone, would her mentee have wanted to continue working for that agency? Maybe not. But had Laverne the counselor dragged on the conversation into the evening, would that have produced a powerfully wrong lesson about indecision? Maybe so.

Conclusion: Others’ right-versus-wrong situations can throw us into tough ethical dilemmas. Just because something’s wrong doesn’t excuse us from thinking hard about doing right.

©2008 Institute for Global Ethics

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