Reviewed by Asher Syed for Readers' Favorite

As artificial intelligence begins influencing decisions with human consequences, in The Right Call: A Leader’s Guide to Ethical Decision Making in Practice, Tremaine du Preez examines what happens when organizations can no longer separate operational success from ethical responsibility. The book follows leaders facing situations where public commitments become difficult to maintain once real costs appear. A pharmaceutical executive must decide whether environmental targets should outweigh access to medication for vulnerable patients. Hospital staff confronts the aftermath of a fatal medical error shaped partly by institutional practice. Employees inside major organizations struggle to raise concerns before harmful conduct becomes accepted routine. Drawing from philosophy, corporate case studies, workplace research, and interviews with ethics specialist Tracey Groves, du Preez presents ethics as something built through leadership behavior, workplace systems, and the conditions organizations create before moments of pressure force difficult decisions.

Tremaine du Preez’s The Right Call shows something many executives spend years learning too late: culture is revealed when pressure enters the room. The author keeps returning to the uncomfortable reality that values written into mission statements mean very little once real livelihoods, promotions, medical outcomes, or institutional reputations become involved. That gives the book unusual relevance at a moment when artificial intelligence increasingly participates in decisions affecting employment and healthcare. The author writes with the practical tone of someone who has spent time inside organizations where people convince themselves that small compromises are harmless until damage becomes systemic. The diagnostic questioning tools are especially useful because they force managers to slow down long enough to examine motive, consequence, and accountability before momentum takes over. Research involving multinational banking systems alongside workplace legislation gives the material credibility grounded in lived institutional experience. Professionals responsible for staff welfare, executive leadership, or organizational conduct will find this guide highly worthwhile.