Editor's Note: While working on an article about business ethics, we quickly realized that we would need to talk about personal ethics first. With this article we are laying the groundwork for the business ethics article, Business in Search of its Soul.

Our eyes met over the fortune cookies. Half-empty cartons of chicken sub gum were strewn about the table. Candles cast their lambent light across the dimpled surface of the Jacuzzi. The scent of gardenias hung languorously in the air.

Suddenly, my cookie crumbled, and my fortune lay before me. It read: "You would not sacrifice your principles for any power or money."

Well, I thought, that's probably true. But--what are my principles?

A case for absolutes: What do morals mean today?

Life is complex, and so is morality. Rather than one heroic moment of truth that proves our moral mettle, the principles we really believe in are twined within the small change of our lives--in the juicy, fecund, profound, and trivial decisions we make every day. Leave a note when we ding a car in the parking lot? Leave a marriage? Get our overage kid into the movies free? Get an abortion?

Experts suggest we learn our ethics in the same way we learn our language--by absorbing the inflections and nuances that have surrounded us since birth. We learned what is fair and honest and decent through the significant adults we lived with and the culture that surrounded us. The learning wasn't structured, and we may have picked up some garbled moral syntax along the way.

At some point, however, we patched together our own moral codes from the myths of Sunday School classes and the maxims of our parents. In Philosophy 101, we might have picked up the categorical imperatives of Kant and the utilitarian ethics of Mills--an indigestible moral gumbo that doesn't magically turn into a useful tool for decision making when we are filling out an expense report or find an errant roll of Lifesavers in our four-year-old's pocket. (Is stealing always wrong or does it depend on from whom one steals--the corner grocer or the fat corporation that doesn't pay us enough?)

Yet, if our values are intertwined with the way we live our lives, why do we feel so unsure? Why is it so hard to name the principles we believe in? Why do we so often stumble over small compromises that nibble away at our moral fiber?

"What we see in the people we work with is a good deal of confusion," says Rushworth Kidder, president of the Institute for Global Ethics and author of How Good People Make Tough Choices. "They feel as though standards have broken down, and the only alternative is a politically correct notion that there are no moral standards, that everything is relative, and you just have to muddle your way through."

When ethics are relative, you decide what's right for you, and I decide what's right for me. Neither of us imposes our ethics on the other. Morality is a personal and private affair. It's all very democratic, but it has the backbone of Jello.

These ethical notions are fragments, says Robert G. Kennedy, professor of business ethics at the University of St. Thomas in Minnesota. They are bits of incompatible moral theories that have filtered into everyday life as toothless as codfish.

"At the end of the Twentieth Century we are looking at the wreckage of contemporary moral philosophy," he says. "We're faced with new questions, and we recognize that the fragmented and conflicting morality we're left with just doesn't cut it. It isn't robust enough to deal reasonably with these issues."

Indeed, the issues are massive. Morality has always cut to the quick of the human condition, but never before has so much rested in the hands of technically savvy but morally untested individuals. Moral literacy is not a requirement for physics or engineering . The armed services doesn't discuss the ethics of killing. Yet, with today's paraphernalia, a 16-year-old with a grudge can blow up a school; a president with the personal integrity of a toad has a finger on nuclear Armageddon. Human nature hasn't changed since Adam, but our technical capabilities certainly have.

"We're coming to understand at the end of this century that ethics is no longer a luxury," says Kidder. "It's absolutely essential to our survival."

Some morals are absolute. All situations are, well, situational

There are absolute moral laws. There. Take it to the bank.

They are, however, few. To be absolute, a rule has to apply to all people everywhere for all time. It "strikes deeply at what it means to be a good human being," says Kennedy. "These are rules for which there is no circumstance that would justify breaking them." An absolute rule like this might be "do not kill an innocent person." Absolute rules are the broad-brush strokes. They leave us to figure out the details.

All religions have their list of absolutes, and there is surprising harmony among them. Theologian Hans Kung has distilled five basic commandments that he says are common to the world's religions: do not kill, do not lie, do not steal, do not practice immorality, respect parents and love children. These are widely recognized ethical standards--a moral bedrock that people ought to take seriously.

For the most part, if we keep our noses clean and live responsibly, common sense ethics holds up under garden-variety dilemmas. But life is messy, and situations have a way of becoming tortuous. Do you keep a promise to a friend if it means telling a lie to someone else? Do you overlook a serious injustice because exposing it will bring unpleasantness to you and your family? Do you report a neighbor who may be abusing a child even though you do not trust the system to which you are reporting?

Most of life's dilemmas are limned in shades of gray and rendering them in black and white distorts the picture badly. The most stubborn ethical situations don't involve clear choices between good and evil. They present us with choices between conflicting values. (Keep our promise or tell the truth. Act justly or protect our family.) There may be more than one good answer, or there may be no good answer at all, only a least bad alternative.

In the end, we are responsible for the decisions we make. That responsibility carries an obligation to at least think through the situations that confront us. "To the central question of morality, 'How should I conduct myself?' the right answer may be, 'I ought to pay attention and think before I act.' " writes Tibor R. Machan in A Primer on Ethics.

What kind of person makes good decisions?

A moral troglodyte might be able to decide well now and then. But someone who acts consistently with integrity and good judgment has had lots of practice.

We are not born virtuous. We may have inherited good traits; we may have been gifted with a healthy environment and good examples, but it is as difficult to be virtuous as it is to live well. If you want to play the piano, you practice the piano; if you want to be virtuous, you practice virtue. You tell the truth; you try to be fair; you think about decisions; you flex your moral muscle. And, like other skills, you get better at it (so I'm told).

"You will find, not that you automatically come up with the right answer, but you will know what the answer isn't," says John Lincourt, PhD., director of the Center for Applied and Professional Ethics at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte Philosophy Center. "You'll eliminate the junk and get down to options that carry water, that will do some good."

So, perhaps ethics asks two questions of us: How should I live? And: What kind of person do I need to be in order to live a good life? One involves moral rules; the other, the development of virtue. Neither are easy. And neither are optional.

Fortune cookies notwithstanding, KATE CONVISSOR really does think about her principles, and she finds that they can be both demanding as well as forgiving. In the future, however, she intends to be more careful with fortune cookies. Kate writes for Herman Miller and occasionally for national magazines such as Working Mother, Nation's Business, Country Journal, and Kiwanis International.