Though all writing can be described as an attempt at conversation, writing this book confronted me with the considerable challenge of engaging in a conversation with a number of disparate audiences, each with its own set of expectations and priorities. Academic writing is always directed at one's academic peers and senior students, but the intended audience of this book also includes fellow consultants, and those in the corporate and public sectors who are charged with ethics and compliance programs. In fact, it is one of the primary objectives of this text to engage this practitioner audience. However, having emerged, as it has, not only from the experience of a consultant, but also from the reflections of a philosopher, the text is informed by a number of scholarly preoccupations and fascinations. To sustain this kind of conversation required a delicate balancing act in which detailed analysis had to be weighed against accessibility, philosophical interest against immediate relevance, and the exploitation of existing literature against the exploration of new ideas. As such, a certain degree of compromise was both inevitable and unavoidable. I am not entirely convinced that the right “balance” was always struck, but then, finding “balance” would mean accepting the compromise, whereas avoiding it means that the struggle continues.

The questions to which this text is a response originated in and through my engagement with ethics management projects.