It's been said, "With great power comes great responsibility." That is true for writers. Our words change the world, so we must write ethically.

Ethics involves making a decision when confronted with competing values. Let’s say you’re writing a story aimed at young adults. A writers’ agent says, “You should include a racy scene. Young people want that.” So you’re caught between your own convictions—you’d rather not write an off-color scene and your desire to get published. That internal conflict is an ethical scenario that we’ll work through in four steps.

Here are the four steps in making good ethical decisions:

1. Gather accurate facts

In our scenario, are we sure young people want a sexy scene, or could the agent be mistaken?

2. Consider the involved parties

These parties are called stakeholders, and there are six:

a) You

You do, after all, have to live with yourself and sleep at night. Are you going to be able to live with your decision?

b) Your employer, if any

How will your decision reflect on your organization? Will it raise the public's opinion, or lower it?

c) The person or group who is the object of the story

At the heart of every ethical decision is a person or people, young people in this case. If you write the questionable scene will it hurt them? Or help them?

d) Financial supporters

You’re presumably writing to earn money, and the scene may help you sell more books. But will it turn off some would-be buyers?

e) The profession of writing

Will your ethical decision help your readers to respect writers?

f) Society as a whole

Will your decision benefit society at large? Or be a detriment?

Now that you've considered all the stakeholders, here’s the third step in making a good ethical decision.

3. Develop options

Here's where ethical decision making really gets interesting. Quite often, when people make ethical decisions they only consider two options—yes or no. In our case, either include the racy scene or don’t.

But there are almost always many, many more potential options. Here are some:

Include the scene, but make it mild

Make the scene short

Put it late in the book so your readers understand it’s not representative of the book as a whole

Provide a disclaimer before the scene

And no doubt there are other options.

Furthermore, once you develop a few options you can start combining them, e.g. make the scene both short and mild. Or make it short and late in the book. You can develop an all-but-endless list of options.

Once you have options, here is the last step in the ethical decision-making process.

4. Formulate a decision

Your decision should be based on two goals: 1) maximizing value, and 2) minimizing harm. Also, you must consider both the short term and long-term results.

You don’t need to literally work through this information every time you make an ethical decision. But if you know the principles and apply them you can be reasonably sure you've made a good ethical decision.