OK, so here is my answer to the fourth of the five questions I promised I would answer.

This one is tricky. Not because I find it hard to answer but because it produces an inner conflict in all of us.

Question 4. When is it time to stop calculating risk and rewards and just do what you know is right?

Answer: Now.

Why?

Well to start with see the answer to question two above.

Secondly because in my view it is more ethical. Risk and reward imply a conscious choice to do something which is not optimal and not what your inner morality says should be. And shouldn’t we all be following our inner ethics?

My belief is that we all have that inner morality, even underlying all our religious, political and sociological superstructure of beliefs; and underlying our selfish desires. It is nothing to do with man-made constructs of belief; it’s to do with an inner respect of life.

That doesn’t mean it’s easy. And it certainly doesn’t mean I always get it right — much as I would like to. We all end up making greater or lesser compromises for a whole variety of reasons. But if we’re true to our underlying ethics we likely shouldn’t except perhaps in the pursuance of purely staying alive (and maybe sometimes not even then).

Do murderers (think, say, the Krays) really deep, deep down not know what they’re doing is wrong? Do bankers who make vast profits on the back of screwing peoples’ mortgage rates and businesses not understand, deep down, the lack of ethics in what they’re doing? I feel sure they do know these things. They may be brainwashed so they can’t allow that knowledge out, but I think it is there somewhere. Had they listened to that inner ethics early on maybe they wouldn’t have ended up where they did. And maybe the world would be a better place. Who knows.

Ultimately I think there is good, ethical, behaviour in all of us if we can but recognise it. But yes, that can be hard because in other ways we are wired to be selfish — because being selfish is a good personal survival strategy and at the first level evolution and “survival of the fittest” mean that we have to strive to survive and produce offspring. And remembering Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs that is deeper rooted than our sense of ethics.

So yes, it’s hard and can be uncomfortable, but in a society where we don’t have to literally fight for food and shelter surely we should strive to rise above our “animal instincts” and listen to our inner morality and ethics.

Perhaps it is best summed up in the words of my late friend Jim Duggan: Let your conscience be your guide. Not your ego or your bank balance.

And I fail just as much as the next person!