These facts demonstrate that one cannot always rely on the law to decide
what is right or wrong. The manager whose employee suffers from asthma will
need to make a decision and the law won’t decide this for her. Sometimes, the
law itself requires ethical analysis for many of its decisions. Legal decisions in
the Enron case will not be based solely on legal precedent (since, by definition,
"pushing the envelope” is to go into the gray area beyond what is obviously
prohibited by precedent) but upon a judge and jury’s determination that the
acts were unfair and unethical. Because most business decisions never get to
the point where a judge and jury are asked to make a determination, business
managers will be faced with the unavoidable responsibility of looking beyond
the law for guidance in making ethical decisions.