Ethical moral or legal dilemma and your role as moral agent
A four-part assignment introducing the conceptual frameworks of ethics, morals and legal standards, describing a dilemma encountered in your own work environment, analysing its moral, ethical and legal implications alongside your role as moral agent or advocate, and judging whether your self-assessed leadership styles helped or hindered you during it.
Editorial process
Last reviewed · August 13, 2026
One dilemma carrying all four bullets
The four bullets are not four topics, they are one argument in sequence, and the assignment is graded on whether the sequence holds. The frameworks introduced in the first bullet have to be the frameworks used in the third; the dilemma described in the second has to be the dilemma analysed in the third; the leadership styles examined in the fourth have to be the ones you brought to that same dilemma. Written as four independent sections the paper still covers everything asked and still reads as thin, because nothing later depends on anything earlier. The most reliable way to keep the thread is to choose the dilemma first, before writing a word of the framework section, and then introduce only the constructs that dilemma actually needs. A definition of deontology that never returns is padding; a definition that explains why you could not simply act on the outcome you preferred is the paper working.
Ethics, morals and legal standards are three distinct constructs and the first bullet asks you to introduce them as such. The most useful distinction for this assignment is by source of authority. Morals are the internalised commitments a person brings with them, formed by upbringing, culture and faith. Ethics are the reasoned standards a profession sets and can be held to, expressed in nursing through a published code. Legal standards are enacted rules with enforcement behind them, indifferent to whether an individual finds them right. The reason the distinction earns marks is that genuine dilemmas are usually collisions between these sources rather than a simple choice between right and wrong. A situation where the lawful action, the professionally required action and the personally right action all point the same way is uncomfortable but it is not a dilemma, and papers that describe one lose ground in the analysis.
Choosing the dilemma is therefore the decision that determines the grade. Look for a case where two obligations you actually held pulled in different directions: a patient's stated wish against a family's insistence, a colleague's impairment against loyalty and a duty to report, a staffing level you were told to accept against what you judged safe, a disclosure that policy permitted and confidentiality resisted. Describe it with enough clinical and organisational detail that the tension is visible, and with names, dates and identifying detail removed. Avoid the retrospectively resolved story in which you did the obviously correct thing and everyone agreed. It reads as a competence anecdote rather than an ethical analysis, and it leaves the third bullet with nothing to weigh, since analysis requires something that was genuinely in the balance at the time. If no episode supplies that tension, widen the search rather than dramatise a routine decision.
The third bullet contains two demands and both are easy to under-answer. Analysing moral, ethical and legal implications means taking each construct in turn and saying what it required of you in this case, which is where the collision becomes explicit rather than asserted. Naming your role as moral agent or advocate is the part most often reduced to a sentence. Moral agency is the capacity and the standing to act on a moral judgement, and it is worth being honest about how much of it you actually had. Advocacy is a distinct role that speaks on behalf of a patient's interest and sometimes against your own organisation. Say which you occupied, whether you occupied it fully, and what constrained you. Moral distress, the experience of knowing the right action and being unable to take it, is the concept that usually names what happened. Naming it accurately is worth more than claiming an agency you did not have.
The fourth bullet is the one that ties the paper to the course rather than to ethics generally, and it asks a genuine question rather than an invitation to praise yourself. Take the leadership styles your self-assessment actually returned, name them, and then judge each as barrier or facilitator in this specific episode. A transformational style may have helped you frame the issue for a team and may equally have delayed a decision that needed making unilaterally. A transactional style may have made escalation quick and made challenging a policy harder. Honesty scores here: a style that hindered you is the more interesting finding and the more credible one, because a self-assessment that turns out to have been uniformly helpful suggests it was never really tested against the case. Say what would have to change in your practice for the assessment to read differently. A style is a habit rather than a fixed trait.
On execution, keep the introduction doing the work the first bullet asks of it, which includes stating the purpose of the paper explicitly, since that clause is in the prompt and is routinely missed. Write in the first person where you are describing what you did, and in the third where you are stating what a framework holds, so the reader can always tell an obligation from a decision. Support the framework and moral-agency sections with published sources rather than lecture recall, and cite the professional code you were actually bound by, since a code named but not quoted is weak evidence of the standard you say applied. Protect the confidentiality of everyone in the account, and end on what the analysis changed, which is the only ending that treats the episode as more than a story. Say what you would do differently if the same collision arrived tomorrow, and the paper closes on the analysis rather than on the incident.
Likely learning objectives
Inferred from the brief — check these against your own rubric.
- 01Distinguish moral, ethical and legal standards by their source of authority.
- 02Select a dilemma in which two real obligations collided.
- 03Analyse one case through all three constructs rather than asserting a conflict.
- 04Describe moral agency and advocacy as distinct roles, with their constraints.
- 05Judge your own leadership styles as barrier or facilitator in a specific episode.
Read the full question
Review every instruction before using the planning guidance that follows.
Course-wide instructions that accompany this question
You must proofread your paper. But do not strictly rely on your computer’s spell-checker and grammar-checker; failure to do so indicates a lack of effort on your part and you can expect your grade to suffer accordingly. Papers with numerous misspelled words and grammatical mistakes will be penalized. Read over your paper – in silence and then aloud – before handing it in and make corrections as necessary. Often it is advantageous to have a friend proofread your paper for obvious errors. Handwritten corrections are preferable to uncorrected mistakes. Use a standard 10 to 12 point (10 to 12 characters per inch) typeface. Smaller or compressed type and papers with small margins or single-spacing are hard to read. It is better to let your essay run over the recommended number of pages than to try to compress it into fewer pages. Conceptual Frameworks Of The Ethical Constructs DQ Likewise, large type, large margins, large indentations, triple-spacing, increased leading (space between lines), increased kerning (space between letters), and any other such attempts at “padding” to increase the length of a paper are unacceptable, wasteful of trees, and will not fool your professor. The paper must be neatly formatted, double-spaced with a one-inch margin on the top, bottom, and sides of each page. When submitting hard copy, be sure to use white paper and print out using dark ink. If it is hard to read your essay, it will also be hard to follow your argument. ADDITIONAL INSTRUCTIONS FOR THE CLASS Discussion Questions (DQ) Initial responses to the DQ should address all components of the questions asked, include a minimum of one scholarly source, and be at least 250 words. Successful responses are substantive (i.e., add something new to the discussion, engage others in the discussion, well-developed idea) and include at least one scholarly source. One or two sentence responses, simple statements of agreement or “good post,” and responses that are off-topic will not count as substantive. Substantive responses should be at least 150 words. I encourage you to incorporate the readings from the week (as applicable) into your responses. Weekly Participation Your initial responses to the mandatory DQ do not count toward participation and are graded separately. In addition to the DQ responses, you must post at least one reply to peers (or me) on three separate days, for a total of three replies. Participation posts do not require a scholarly source/citation (unless you cite someone else’s work). Part of your weekly participation includes viewing the weekly announcement and attesting to watching it in the comments. These announcements are made to ensure you understand everything that is due during the week. APA Format and Writing Quality Familiarize yourself with APA format and practice using it correctly. It is used for most writing assignments for your degree. Visit the Writing Center in the Student Success Center, under the Resources tab in LoudCloud for APA paper templates, citation examples, tips, etc. Points will be deducted for poor use of APA format or absence of APA format (if required). Cite all sources of information! When in doubt, cite the source. Paraphrasing also requires a citation. I highly recommend using the APA Publication Manual, 6th edition. Use of Direct Quotes I discourage overutilization of direct quotes in DQs and assignments at the Masters’ level and deduct points accordingly. As Masters’ level students, it is important that you be able to critically analyze and interpret information from journal articles and other resources. Simply restating someone else’s words does not demonstrate an understanding of the content or critical analysis of the content. It is best to paraphrase content and cite your source. LopesWrite Policy For assignments that need to be submitted to LopesWrite, please be sure you have received your report and Similarity Index (SI) percentage BEFORE you do a “final submit” to me. Once you have received your report, please review it. This report will show you grammatical, punctuation, and spelling errors that can easily be fixed. Take the extra few minutes to review instead of getting counted off for these mistakes. Review your similarities. Did you forget to cite something? Did you not paraphrase well enough? Is your paper made up of someone else’s thoughts more than your own? Visit the Writing Center in the Student Success Center, under the Resources tab in LoudCloud for tips on improving your paper and SI score. Late Policy The university’s policy on late assignments is 10% penalty PER DAY LATE. This also applies to late DQ replies. Please communicate with me if you anticipate having to submit an assignment late. I am happy to be flexible, with advance notice. We may be able to work out an extension based on extenuating circumstances. If you do not communicate with me before submitting an assignment late, the GCU late policy will be in effect. I do not accept assignments that are two or more weeks late unless we have worked out an extension. As per policy, no assignments are accepted after the last day of class. Any assignment submitted after midnight on the last day of class will not be accepted for grading. Communication Communication is so very important. There are multiple ways to communicate with me: Questions to Instructor Forum: This is a great place to ask course content or assignment questions. If you have a question, there is a good chance one of your peers does as well. This is a public forum for the class. Individual Forum: This is a private forum to ask me questions or send me messages. This will be checked at least once every 24 hours. Conceptual Frameworks Of The Ethical Constructs DQ
Turn the brief into deliverables
- 01An introduction to the conceptual frameworks of ethics, morals and legal standards.
- 02A statement of the purpose of the paper.
- 03A description of an ethical, moral or legal dilemma encountered in your work environment.
- 04An analysis of the moral, ethical and legal implications of that situation.
- 05A description of your role as moral agent or advocate for the issue.
- 06A judgement on whether your self-assessed leadership styles acted as barrier or facilitator.
- 07De-identified detail throughout, and scholarly support for the frameworks used.
Frameworks, case, analysis, leadership
Introduction and purpose
Introduce the three constructs and state what the paper sets out to do.
Frameworks by source of authority
Morals, ethics and legal standards distinguished by where their authority comes from.
The dilemma
A de-identified account with enough detail that the competing obligations are visible.
Moral and ethical implications
What your own commitments and the professional code each required here.
Legal implications
The enacted standards in play and what they permitted or compelled.
Moral agent or advocate
Which role you held, how fully, and what constrained it.
Leadership styles as barrier or facilitator
Each self-assessed style judged against this episode, with reasons.
Codes, moral distress and the evidence base
Recommended databases
- CINAHL
- PubMed
- NCBI Bookshelf
- The professional code that governs your practice
Search sequence
- 1.Read the current code of ethics for your profession before writing the ethical implications section.
- 2.Search for moral distress and moral agency in nursing to name the constraint precisely.
- 3.Search for the legal standard specific to your case, such as reporting duties or consent law in your jurisdiction.
- 4.Find one source on the leadership style your self-assessment returned, so the fourth bullet is evidenced.
- 5.Check that each source addresses practice rather than ethical theory in the abstract.
Reference shortlist
These are authoritative starting points, not a ready-made bibliography. A qualified reviewer must confirm that each source fits the assignment and supports the claim beside which it is cited.
Nothing here is cleared for citation until you have read it.
- 01
Nursing Ethical Considerations
StatPearls, NCBI Bookshelf · 2023
Working account of autonomy, beneficence, nonmaleficence and justice as applied at the bedside, for the framework and analysis sections.
- 02
2025 Code of Ethics for Nurses
American Nurses Association · 2025
The professional standard itself, to quote for what the code required of you in this specific case.
- 03
Duty to Warn
StatPearls, NCBI Bookshelf · 2023
A worked example of a legal standard overriding a confidentiality obligation, useful when the dilemma involves disclosure.
- 04
Nursing Shortage
StatPearls, NCBI Bookshelf · 2023
Evidence on staffing constraints, for cases where the dilemma turns on what the organisation made possible rather than on individual judgement.
Review before submission
Common mistakes
- Writing four disconnected sections that never depend on one another.
- Defining frameworks that the case analysis then never uses.
- Choosing an episode with no genuine conflict, so there is nothing to analyse.
- Reducing moral agency to a single sentence about doing the right thing.
- Reporting that every leadership style helped, which suggests no real test.
- Naming a professional code without saying what it required in this case.
- Leaving identifying detail in the description of a real workplace episode.
Submission checklist
- The dilemma was chosen before the framework section was written.
- Morals, ethics and legal standards are distinguished by source of authority.
- The purpose of the paper is stated explicitly in the introduction.
- The case description makes the competing obligations visible.
- Each of the three constructs is applied to the case in turn.
- Moral agent and advocate are treated as different roles, and one is claimed.
- Constraints on your agency are named, including moral distress where it applies.
- Each self-assessed leadership style is judged barrier or facilitator, with reasons.
- At least one style is identified as unhelpful, if that is honest.
- All identifying detail about patients, colleagues and the employer is removed.
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Written by
Aaron Bishop
MA, Education
assignment interpretation and research-methods coaching across disciplines
Aaron leads the EssayCrackers editorial desk. He works on how assignment briefs are read — what a rubric is actually asking for, and where students most often answer a different question than the one set.
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Dr. Nathan Cole
PhD, Rhetoric & Composition
Argumentation and thesis development
Nathan teaches first-year composition and directs a university writing center. He reviews EssayCrackers guides for argumentative soundness and citation accuracy.