YES, NO, MAYBE SO: ETHICS IN THE WORLD OF LEGISLATURES: Can you spot ethical pitfalls?

• Author: Birdsong, Nicholas

Some choices are so clearly wrong that no reasonable person could fail to identify them as unethical. You don't need to be a philosopher to know you shouldn't steal public funds. And common sense alone should be enough to stop you from accepting a bribe.

But the most dangerous pitfalls sometimes don't appear to be matters of ethics at all. How do we identify the subtler moral questions?

Most people would find it rude to ask friends or associates about the value of a gift, for example, but ethics laws often require a detailed accounting of gifts received. A public official participating in unpaid speaking engagements might not keep records of expense reimbursements, but states sometimes require the disclosure of travel, lodging or food provided as part of an event. It may seem harmless for a legislator-attorney to use the honorifics "senator" or "representative" in a court document's signature block, but some conflict-of-interest statutes explicitly forbid the use of official titles in judicial proceedings.

It would be great if we were wired with alarm bells that went off in ethically dicey situations, or had inner voices that screamed, "Doing this is wrong, illegal and could irreparably damage your career!" Fact is, a comprehensive list of all possible ethics conundrums could fill libraries, making the likelihood of knowing the right answer in every case highly unlikely. Avoiding pitfalls requires developing a set of skills to help you make reliably ethical choices. Here are four ways to help you do that.

* Know the rules. Ethics rules generally aim to prohibit conduct that benefits public figures personally. If you don't understand the rules, you're more likely to make mistakes. But it isn't always easy to connect abstract rules to real-life scenarios. Certain conduct might not break any rules but could be considered unethical, and potentially damaging to your...