Cheating the Honest Way

When faced with tough choices, invent different answers

The Trolley Problem is a classic ethical conundrum. A train hurtles down a track. Up ahead, there’s a split—on one track, five people; on the other, just one. You can let the train rumble on and kill five people or flick a switch and take out just one. A or B? 5 or 1?

In a commentary article for Fortune, Laura Pincus Hartman, a clinical professor of business ethics & values and director of the Susilo Institute for Ethics in the Global Economy, writes that in “every single circumstance where I have asked business executives or students to respond to this same question, the response is either to reroute the train or not.”

She writes that the “most ethical choice might not be one of the options we are offered.”

Not A or B, but C, D, or E.

To find alternative answers, Hartman recommends companies regularly act out ethical dilemmas to prepare for the worst, take chances when the stakes are lower, and encourage creativity by diversifying the workforce and bringing critics to the table.

As for the trolley, she writes, “did you consider yelling to the single individual on the track to get out of the way” and then flicking the switch?