What happened here? Ponting was obliged in his role as a civil servant to keep his promise not to reveal state secrets. Yet he argued that it could not be in the public interest to keep secret a deception of such magnitude and therefore he leaked the memo. His defense, therefore, was based around the consequences of the attack (the loss of life, the cover-up) rather than on reference to the duty under which there was little doubt he was sworn to serve. It is possible to argue, as Moore suggests, that this is just another type of obligation that public servants find themselves bound to uphold: an obligation to the public interest, to the processes and procedures, and to oneself. Even accepting this argument, however, we can see that an administrator must somehow rank her obligations in order to resolve potential conflicts and that this, again, leads the way to a consequentialist mode of decision making.