Where There’s a Tough Choice, There Will Be Residue

Residue is the lingering effects and responsibilities that remain after making a difficult choice

“What’s the right thing to do?”

It’s a question we ask ourselves daily, not just in life’s big moments, but in countless small decisions where our values collide. While some of these choices fade into memory, others leave lasting marks on our conscience and character.

Throughout the millennia, philosophers have attempted to create principles that help us make these inevitable daily tough choices. In moral philosophy, we call these normative theories. You’re probably familiar with some of them: Aristotelian ethics, Kantian moral theory, and consequentialism are the best known in Western culture. In their own way, each tried to formulate a way to come up with the right moral choices for any given scenario.

In 1930, W.D. Ross wrote a seminal article called “What Makes Right Actions Right?” that took a different direction. Ross starts with a vignette of a man caught in a moral dilemma: he’s fiercely patriotic and wants to fight for his country, but his mother is ill and needs him to be a caretaker. His duty to his country and his duty to his mother are at odds and he cannot attend to both.

His example won’t feel grippy for a lot of people now, as that kind of patriotism has waned for so many that the only clear choice is to be his mother’s caregiver. Even the word duty feels dated or exclusive to professions like the military. Pretend for a minute, though, that the motivations for either choice were equally as strong for you.

Ross used the example to highlight a few important ideas:

1. There’s no clear right answer in this situation.

2. There are usually contextual factors unique to the individuals and specific scenarios that may make one choice right for one person and wrong for another.

3. Regardless of which choice you take, there’s going to be some residue. Residue is the lingering effects and responsibilities that remain after making a difficult choice.

When I taught moral philosophy in my twenties back in the mid 2000s, I had an intellectual respect for moral pluralism but it didn’t sit well with me. I wanted a more determinative normative principle — I wanted the right formula that the Indigo Girls alluded to in “Least Complicated.” (“For whatever kind of puzzle you’ve got / just stick the right formula in / a solution for every fool”.)

But as I’ve aged — ripened like fruit in the sun, gathering wisdom along with wrinkles — I’ve come to appreciate moral pluralism as a more-accurate-to-life normative theory. The notion of residue has stuck and been one of the more helpful ideas, up there with moderation from Aristotelian ethics and the second Kantian principle. What ‘residue’ and moral pluralism speak to better than other theories is that there’s a responsibility to address the leftovers from a choice.

Let’s extend moral pluralism to value pluralism since the core tenets apply to decisions that aren’t strictly moral. All moral considerations are value considerations, but not all value considerations are moral ones. Most of those thorny decisions we’re grappling with are value decisions, and we’re stuck because we’re feeling the weight of the residue of our choices.

The following three contemporary scenarios show how value conflicts manifest in our everyday lives — from parenting and consumer choices to organizational leadership. Each situation demonstrates why moral pluralism’s recognition of irreconcilable values and inevitable residue offers a more realistic framework than seeking perfect solutions.

Parenting vs. Productivity

As Angela and I were transitioning from our motorcycle ride Saturday, our neighbor (Meredith) came over and chatted with us for a few minutes. It was one of the first idyllic spring days in Portland and she had plans to get a lot of stuff done in her yard.

Unfortunately, her daughter (Rosie) had other designs for the day. To Rosie, it was a perfect day to play frisbee (her words) with her mom.

Meredith was talking to us as Rosie was running to pick up the frisbee she didn’t catch. Meredith had clearly come around to seeing Rosie’s point of view, but she was also lamenting to us about how much she had to do (that she couldn’t while playing frisbee).

Given that Rosie is five years old, Meredith’s value tension was mostly with herself: how can she be a great, engaged mother while also tending to her home and yard, which I’m guessing is a mix of what she feels she needs to do and wants to do. But as Rosie ages, the tension may heighten because she’ll also be modeling choices around prioritizing work, chores, and spending quality time with people you love. Meredith is a conscious parent and knows that, in many ways, she’s strongly influencing the value set her daughter will have.

Meredith just wanted to get some plants in the ground on a beautiful spring Saturday, and yet, there she was, grappling with the residue of choosing to play with Rosie. While the header of this section is Parenting vs. Productivity, my actual position is that being a great parent is being productive.

Buying at Chain Stores vs. Buying Local

Imagine that you live in a place where you have access to chain stores and local stores.

The chain stores use their economies of scale to offer a wider variety of cheaper, healthier, and environmentally sustainable products, but they also have employment practices you detest, you feel they borderline cheat their suppliers, and the owner/CEO is making headlines for a variety of things that you find problematic.

Your local store carries the basic products you need, but their variety is much smaller and their prices are much higher. They take great care of their employees in terms of wages, but they can’t afford to offer healthcare, education benefits, etc. They’re also struggling to compete with the chain stores.

Let’s also pretend that, while you’re above barely getting by financially, you’re also not in a place where the price differences are inconsequential. Choosing to buy local means you may not be able to afford the extracurriculars for the kids or the new car you need.

This isn’t a mere thought experiment for a lot of us; it’s reality.

On the one hand, it seems like an easy call is that buying local is the “conscious shopping” choice. But buying local means paying more for products that may be causing greater mid-to-long-term harm and not being able to invest in your family or community. Shopping at the chain may be the better choice for your wallet and pantry, but it may feed a system you find toxic and extractive.

Either way you go, there’s going to be some residue.

Supporting the Teammate vs. Supporting the Team

Let’s imagine that your direct report, Tony, was a phenom when you hired him and for the first year he was with your firm. Shortly after you hired him, his partner Amy got pregnant. The baby was born healthy, but Amy had health complications alongside severe postpartum depression. Tony’s previously phenomenal performance has turned into a lot of dropped balls, absences, and unreliability as he’s drowning to keep his family healthy and alive.

His team has been doing the best they can without him, but he’s their manager and they started projects while he was “on” that they just can’t see through themselves. Their readiness plummeted in parallel with his life, and there’s no way it’s going to improve without an active, competent manager in that seat. To make things worse, his team, as a whole, is now costing considerably more than it’s bringing in and jeopardizing the entire firm.

An additional wrinkle is that Tony is one of just three men in your twenty-person firm, and he brings important diversity to your team in multiple other ways. When he’s “on,” his skillset, perspective, and presence makes a real difference, and none of you want to let him go given how many of the women of your firm have been let go or passed over for promotion for prioritizing caretaking.

Everyone wants to keep Tony at the firm, but there’s no end in sight for when he’ll be back on. Amy’s not able to work in her condition and the unemployment Tony would get isn’t enough to cover their family’s needs.

And yet, his team and the firm can’t bear covering his salary and hiring an interim fill, and, even if it could, it’ll take 6-9 months to find someone at his level and performance. Everyone else, including you, is at capacity and can’t fill in for him.

If you stick with holding out for and supporting Tony, the entire firm is jeopardized. You may have to cut members of his team down the line and, even if you didn’t, it’s hard to have any performance conversations because Tony’s malperformance is both a root cause and a precedent.

But firing Tony sets a different precedent and also has cultural implications. And it’s also leaving a managerial hole right where Tony sat anyway.

With either choice, you’re going to have a lot of residue to deal with.

What to Do with Residue

I’m hoping that the not-so-hypotheticals above pull you into the tensions and problems that value pluralism aims to describe. We’re all bobbing in an ocean of value tensions every day and we can’t make them go away.

And the real tension here is that some of these choices are identity choices in that they touch on who we are and who we want to be.

If you’re feeling the tension of value conflict, here’s how to keep from being drowned by it:

1. Realize that residue doesn’t mean you’ve made the wrong decision; it just means you had an irreconcilable value conflict. Consider Meredith’s situation: choosing to play frisbee with her daughter wasn’t wrong, even though it left residue in the form of undone yard work. Too often, people avoid choosing because they’re trying to create a scenario that has no residue, but indecision itself is a decision with its own residue.

2. Name the values at tension. It’s extremely helpful to get out of the “Ugh!” and be explicit about what values are actually in tension. In Tony’s case, the values aren’t just “support the individual vs. support the team” — they include gender equity, workplace culture, financial sustainability, and care ethics. Sometimes, naming the values reveals they’re not in contrary positions, but that in this situation, a particular value or set of values needs to take precedence.

3. Articulate the responsibilities that come with the residue. With the chain vs. local store scenario, choosing to shop at chains might create residue around supporting your local community. You might address this by finding other ways to support local businesses, participating in community development initiatives, or advocating for better corporate practices. The key is acknowledging that residue creates new responsibilities without letting those responsibilities paralyze your initial decision.

Sometimes, accepting the situation and grieving are the only actions required because they’re all you can do. Adding guilt or shame about what you ‘should’ be doing only creates more suffering without changing the underlying situation.

Yes, in an ideal world, there might be a sage who could give you a formula to resolve whatever value tension you’re in right now. But once you understand residue, you’ll see it everywhere — we’re all swimming in this incredibly murky ocean of ambiguous value decisions.

The best I can give you today is a way of staying afloat and swimming toward the version of yourself you’re trying to be and become.