Melissa Prusher remembers working in the cosmetics industry in the 1980s and being asked to pull some strings so that her boss could meet an up-and-coming movie star.

Prusher bent over backward to make it happen, but she felt lousy about spending all of her work time on her boss's personal life. After a few more ethically questionable demands, she decided to move on.

"I did end up leaving the company because there were several things that compromised my ethical (standards)," Prusher of Manalapan, N.J., said. She asked herself, "Do I want to be a part of this?"

Prusher was one of several public relations employees who attended a recent workshop about making ethical decisions, and it came at a good time. Workers today continually have to grapple with choices that call into question their own ethics.

Some ethical lapses are clearly over the line. Think about the recent corporate accounting and political bribery scandals. Others are more gray. What's the big deal if you change the ingredients in a can of soup and don't tell anyone?

But experts say companies should teach their workers to keep ethics in mind because the consequences of just one unethical decision can be steep.

"You have to think about the cost of doing business unethically," said Ann Higgins, president of Utopia Communications, a public relations company in Red Bank, N.J. Higgins teaches other public relations firms about value-based decision-making.

ETHICAL QUANDARIES

The stories of disregarded ethics are plentiful. Enron Corp. has become synonymous with the topic. When an accounting scandal was uncovered in 2001, the energy company was toppled and shareholders lost billions.

Since then, companies have continued to be tripped up in ethical quandaries. Merck & Co. Inc. has faced numerous lawsuits that charge the company sold the arthritis drug Vioxx even though it might have known the medicine increased the risk of heart problems.

Even companies with stellar reputations aren't immune. Computer maker Hewlett-Packard Co. was ranked as the nation's second best corporate citizen in 2006 by no less than Business Ethics magazine. The company, however, recently agreed to pay California $14.5 million to settle a lawsuit that alleged executives, wanting to track down leaks to the media, acquired telephone records of reporters and members of its board of directors by using false identities.

The point: Pressure to meet Wall Street's financial expectations or fit into a company's culture can be fierce, and despite the seemingly endless number of lessons, ethical breakdowns continue, said Edwin Hartman, director of the Prudential Business Ethics Center at Rutgers University.

"Ethics isn't about avoiding being Enron," Hartman said. "It's about being a thoughtful, responsible, honest professional and having good values such as the sort of self-respect that would cause you not even to want to be unethical."

SHORT ON SPECIFICS

Ethics can be ingrained in a company's culture, but some experts said the training so far has been short on specifics. It's fine for companies to put in their mission statements that they will always try to do the right thing. But what happens if what you believe to be right is going to cost you thousands of dollars?

"Rules alone don't work," said Carol Orsborn, co-author of the book, "Trust Inc." and an ethics consultant who divides her time between Santa Rosa, Calif., and Washington, D.C. "Life is too complex and it comes at us too fast."

Higgins is working with Orsborn to spread the message: Workers need to have their own value system to call on when faced with tough decisions. They need to understand the consequences of their decisions. And they need to hope their employers respect their employees and communities enough to carry out those decisions.

If allowed to flourish, unethical decisions can lead to high employee turnover or damaging headlines, experts said. In the end, the short-term financial gain can lead to long-term trouble.

Higgins spoke recently to a public relations group in New Jersey, and showed how the industry is faced with touchy questions each day.

Some can result in scandals, she said. A spokesman touted a government program on his radio show without disclosing he was paid to do so. A major public relations company settled a lawsuit charging that it overbilled government agencies.

Others are more common, Higgins said. What if a client approved $300,000 for a marketing plan and you used only $250,000 of it? What if a client wanted you to promote a product as one-of-a-kind, even though you saw a similar one?

"Ethical situations come down to individuals at all levels of an organization," Higgins said. "At the end of the day, are you willing the make the decision? Do you have strength of your convictions?"