Bloom: Her being 15 or 16 or 17 actually is not the pivotal thing for me. This is a young person who’s troubled by something, who comes to an adult to talk about a problem. If we’re talking about ethics, you don’t turn your back on somebody who has come to you to talk. Part of what I want to encourage is kindness, because that is part of an ethical life as well as being aware of your obligations.

Yoshino: Both of you persuaded me. I was agonizing about whether or not the fact that she was a minor would allow the man to break the confidence, but after listening to you, you have to respect the girl’s maturity in coming to you in the first place. You don’t want to chill people from coming to you in the future.

Shafer: The girl is in no immediate harm. I mean, if she said, “I don’t want my dad to know, but I purchased a handgun, and I’m going to blow my brains out unless the Detroit Tigers win the World Series, don’t tell my dad,” I think that you can violate the confidence there. I don’t think this rises to the threshold.

I work in a small, family-owned retail furniture store with one other employee, my manager. From time to time, she will bring in one or both of her children, who are 11 and 13. She made it clear to me that the owner would be quite unhappy if he became aware of this. I have been in a quandary because it doesn’t seem fair to the kids, and there have been times that I was unable to access computer equipment because one of them needed to do schoolwork. And there is also the question of safety, as I have had to climb over blanketed children to get to supplies. My excuse for not reporting these visits is that my manager is a single working mom. But my conscience tells me I should tell the store owner about the situation. NAME WITHHELD

Shafer: It wouldn’t be unethical for you to complain to your manager’s boss about your manager’s workplace conduct. Millions do it every second. But a question to the letter writer: Are you afraid that you’ll get fired if you complain? Self-preservation has its ethical dimension too.

Bloom: That was actually one of the things that I thought of, which is: Are you afraid that you will get fired if you do complain? Or are you afraid that you will get fired if you don’t complain and Big Boss finds out? It’s kind of a drag for her to have these kids around and to have to tactfully kick a 13-year-old off the computer while the mother is standing there. It would be ethical for the letter writer to go to her co-worker, to Single Mom, and say: “I’m really uncomfortable with the kids coming in, given that you’ve told me that Big Boss would be very unhappy about this. How about if we go in together, and you say you need to bring your kids in, and I say that it’s O.K. with me if you bring your kids in when you have to. If it goes well, you will tell your kids to stay off the work computer when I need it and make every effort to behave themselves beautifully.”

Yoshino: That sounds like a great solution, except I’m intuiting that there’s some kind of power dynamic going on here, where the boss is not going to respond favorably to this. So what’s Plan B? What if the single-mother manager turns to the letter writer and says: “Look, I’m your boss. This is not my problem.” Then what?