The ethics KPI no one tracks is the work you killed.
Let’s start with the uncomfortable truth.
Most organizations love to talk about ethics.
They just don’t love to measure it.
So they track what’s easy:
- Training completion rates
- Policies published
- Reviews performed
- Committees formed
- Boxes checked
All fine. All tidy. All largely meaningless.
All of that looks great in a deck.
All of it looks responsible in an audit.
None of it proves anything.
Because ethics is not proven by what you approved.
It’s proven by what you refused.
Let’s go.
Ethics isn’t a belief system. It’s a set of constraints. And constraints only matter when they cost you something.
Time.
Revenue.
Momentum.
Applause.
If your ethics never cost you anything, it isn’t ethics.
This is where most organizations get confused. They treat ethics like intent. Like values. Like something you state and then move on from.
But beliefs are cheap. Constraints are not. Real ethics shows up when something would work, and you still say no. When the market opportunity is real. When the revenue is obvious. When the team is excited. When the pressure is loud. That’s the moment ethics becomes visible.
Approvals are easy. You can approve almost anything when the downside feels abstract. “We’ll monitor it.” “We’ll add guardrails later.” “We’ll revisit after launch.” Enforcement is different. Enforcement creates friction. It slows teams down. It disappoints people. It kills momentum.
Which is exactly why it’s rare.
Most of the things you should kill would ship just fine. They’d sell. They’d scale. They’d look good on a roadmap. That’s what makes the decision real. If the bad ideas failed immediately, none of this would be hard.
Intent doesn’t save you here. “We meant well” doesn’t undo impact. Ethics isn’t about what you hoped would happen. It’s about what you prevented from happening when incentives were pushing the other way.
Constraints aren’t anti-innovation. They are the shape of serious innovation. Every mature system has them. Engineering has constraints. Security has constraints. Finance has constraints.
Ethics should, too.
The strongest leaders don’t ask whether something can be built. They ask whether it should exist at all. That question rarely earns applause. But it’s remembered.
Here’s a simple test: what has your ethics cost you this year? If the answer is “nothing,” that tells you everything you need to know.
Real ethics shows up as a deal you didn’t close. A feature you didn’t ship. A shortcut you didn’t take. If there’s no loss, there was no constraint.
This matters even more in AI because scale is unforgiving. Once something is deployed, stopping it is harder. Explaining it is harder. Undoing it is nearly impossible. Ethics after launch is damage control. Ethics before launch is leadership.
Notice what organizations don’t celebrate. They announce launches. They don’t announce restraint. There’s no press release for the thing you chose not to do. So leaders learn the wrong lesson. Speed is visible. Restraint is not.
Until it is.
Markets forget quickly. People don’t. Users remember how systems treated them. Employees remember what leadership allowed. Trust has a long memory.
Saying no is a skill. It takes clarity, foresight, and authority. It’s much easier to approve and move on. But leadership isn’t about momentum alone. It’s about direction.
Ethics doesn’t publish values. It enforces constraints. It shows up as friction. As delay. As disappointment.
Sometimes, it shows up as a launch you killed that would have looked great on paper.
That’s not failure. That’s the job.
Cristina DiGiacomo is a philosopher of systems who builds ethical infrastructure for the age of AI. She is the founder of 10P1 Inc. and creator of the 10+1 Commandments of Human-AI Co-Existence™, a decision-making tool used by CEOs, CISOs, CAIOs, and compliance leaders navigating high-stakes AI environments. Her work bridges governance and execution, helping organizations embed moral clarity into complex systems. Cristina is the author of the #1 bestselling book Wise Up! At Work, and has received multiple awards for both her strategic and philosophical work, including from The New York Times, Cannes Cyber Lions, and IAOTP. She currently leads the C-Suite Network AI Council and speaks regularly on Responsible AI, Systems Ethics, and moral leadership. For more information about Cristina go here: CRISTINA DIGIACOMO
