Ethical fading occurs when the ethical aspects of a decision disappear from view.
This happens when people focus heavily on some other aspect of a decision, such as profitability or winning. People tend to see what they are looking for, and if they are not looking for an ethical issue, they may miss it altogether.
Psychologist Anne Tenbrunsel and colleagues find that innate psychological tendencies often cause us to engage in self-deception, which blinds us to the ethical components of a decision. For example, euphemisms like “We didn’t bribe anyone… we just ‘greased the wheels,’” help people disguise and overlook their own wrongdoing.
Ethical fading is similar to moral disengagement. Moral disengagement is when people restructure reality in order to make their own actions seem less harmful than they actually are. Both ethical fading and moral disengagement help people minimize the guilt they feel from violating ethical standards.
So, while ethical fading is common, we can try to counteract it by learning to recognize when we put ethical concerns behind other factors in making decisions.