“Do the right thing” is to ethics as “best practice” is to business processes. They’re phrases that sound just like they might mean something.

Except that they don’t.

Case in point, based on a recent request for advice: You’re on a team. The team’s job is to figure out a better way for the company to do something or other.

In the early stages of analysis two alternatives came into focus as potential solutions. Neither was obviously wrong, but over time a team consensus has emerged as to which of the two was the better path forward.

When the time comes to report the preliminary solution to the project’s sponsor and steering committee, though, the project manager presents the other alternative. He’s completely within his authority. You and the rest of the team simply disagree with him.

The ethical question: You’re on the team. Your company’s Values Card makes it clear you’re supposed to do the right thing.

What, however, is this “right thing” you’re supposed to do?

The most obvious approach is to blow the whistle. That’ll show him.

And it might. Or it might not, but the telltale here is “that’ll show him.” Blowing the whistle might in fact be the right choice, but you’d have no way of knowing, because what you’d be doing is satisfying your urge to vent, not holding yourself to high ethical standards.

There is, after all, a reason mutiny on the high seas is frowned upon, even when the captain’s orders appear highly dubious to the crew. Blow the whistle and it won’t be just the project manager’s standing that is lowered in the eyes of the project sponsor — the entire team will look bad whether or not you persuade the sponsor to overrule the project manager.

Add to that the impact on ongoing team dynamics. Your ability to work with the project manager will be permanently impaired. So will your ability to work with many of the other members of the team, who, while on your side with respect to the design itself, disagree with your decision to escalate.

As an alternative to whistleblowing you might simply leave the team. Except, you can’t just leave the team. You’ll have to provide a reason, or perhaps three reasons — one for the project manager, one for your reporting manager, and one for your soon-to-be-erstwhile teammates.

For each audience you can either be honest about the reason or you can make up a plausible excuse. Plausible excuses being convenient falsehoods, this branch probably won’t survive ethical scrutiny, while honesty will result in everyone who knows about what’s going on concluding you’re a prima donna who bails whenever something doesn’t go your way.

So far, so bad: Two alternatives, two unsatisfactory outcomes.

Here’s another one: You can confront the project manager. “What the fleep do you think you were doing!?!?” you might calmly ask at the next team meeting, or, if you’re in the mood to be discreet, privately.

If the project manager were the sort to accept that he’d done something wrong, he wouldn’t have violated the team’s consensus in the first place. If you choose the public option the blow up you’ve just engineered will further damage the ability of the team to function. If you do this privately you’ll merely damage your ability to work effectively with the project manager.

Either way, you won’t change the outcome.

Hmmm.

Another possibility: You can accept the project manager’s decision and move on from there without comment. This avoids all the previous downsides. It does, on the other hand, encourage a repeat performance.

The point of this little tale of woe? It started as a what-do-you-think-I-should-do inquiry, and from that perspective my answer is simple: Keep your mouth shut and document the event. That way, if everything does fall apart as a result of the project manager’s poor choice, you have some hope of salvaging your own reputation.

But there’s a difference between doing what’s most prudent and taking the most ethical course of action.

Those who advocate doing the right thing generally imagine the main barrier standing in the way of right-thing-ness is fear of the personal consequences.

That may be so in some situations. But in just as many, to my way of counting, the biggest barrier isn’t timidity.

It’s the difficulty of figuring out just exactly what the right thing to do is.