Looking the other way. (Comment).

'I was just following orders."

It's the reflexive, ready-made excuse. Over time, it's been used to rationalize everything from the killing of women and children in wartime to the refusal to open up an extra line at the post office. In their own way, kids use it ("Mom told me to do it"), as well as newspaper reporters ("My editor made me write it that way").

So now there is the case of Betty Vinson, a quite-anonymous accountant making 80 grand a year at a big telecom company who suddenly found herself in a bad place: being asked by her boss to make false accounting entries.

As reported last week in the Wall Street Journal, she hesitated at first -- even considered resigning. But after extended meetings with the higher-ups, she not only decided to stay, but agreed to handle the accounting shenanigans. Again and again and again, to the tune of $3.7 billion in falsified profits.

The company happened to be WorldCom.

As the company began its meltdown, Vinson went to the feds and laid everything out, perhaps in the hopes that she would become a prosecution witness. Instead, she was charged on conspiracy and securities fraud charges and faces the prospect of jail time.

So what would you have done?

Before pondering that question, let us first consider all the times we have seen or clone things we wish we hadn't. Sometimes, it's minor stuff, like listening to a sexist/racist jerk at the country club telling jokes that he wouldn't be able to tell anywhere else -- and then finding yourself having to chortle at his obscenities because, after all, he's your boss' best friend.

And sometimes, it's a lot bigger -- like going along with the lawyers' bright idea to contest the claims for unemployment insurance by the workers you have just laid off, just so that your business can avoid higher payroll taxes. Or not having workers' compensation coverage or shipping merchandise you know to be defective or entering receivables in the wrong quarter to boost the bottom line.

Not that a company's misdeeds are usually laid out in such stark terms. When businesses do really bad things, it's often in the shadows -- kind of like stealing from petty cash a little bit at a time. It's only when the stealing gets out of hand that someone finally catches on.

Knowing where to draw the line -- as an employee and a human being -- is one of life's lessons, as I realized in talking last week with Arthur Gross-Schaefer, who happens to be a lawyer and rabbi and teaches business ethics at Loyala Marymount University. "There is no ethical basis for lying, cheating or stealing," he told me -- and that includes providing for your family because there usually are alternatives to illegal or immoral acts.

Of course, it's easy for Rabbi Gross-Schaeffer or me to conclude that Vinson should have quit her job the first time she was asked to cook the books. As reported by the Journal, she feared giving up a salary that was double what her husband was making. At the age of 47, she didn't want to have to look for work, and who could blame her? She could have appealed to the higher-ups but there's no telling where that would have led. Internal whistleblowers can often find themselves in far more jeopardy than if they kept their mouths shut.

So she did what lots of folks do in those circumstances: she rationalized. She followed orders. It probably seemed like a decent idea at the time. Not anymore.

Mark Lacter is editor of the Business Journal.