When a good leader turns a blind eye to a bad leader, you have two lousy leaders.
Life is full of difficult choices. Loyalty and honor are real but can get warped. Pay attention to who earns your loyalty and how you define honor. Does your code hurt more people then it protects? Have you allowed the thirst for money or status to become your master, and ignored your values? Do you betray your purpose by your actions or inactions?
Lists of injustices are easy to create. A good archbishop who protects a bad priest is far less holy than they believe. A good cop who defends a bad cop ceases to be a useful public servant.
Life is complicated and full of nuance. People have individual pressures and motivations we have no visibility into and have no claim to know better. However, common sense exists; right and wrong — good and evil exist. You can argue for your perspective.
Do that.
Make your case for inaction, for protecting predators, enabling deceit, absolving arrogance. Lay out your reasons for tolerating the intolerable, accepting the unacceptable. Do not be silent and ignore the difficulties, or blithely consider it a nightmare from which you’ll magically awake. Do not pray for the clock to run down so you can escape accountability.
Make whatever choices you need to feel whole. They are your choices. However, it would be foolish, should you take the easy, cowardly path, to consider yourself a leader.
Also published on Medium.