One can scarcely open the newspaper without finding examples of smart, well-educated people who have behaved in ethically challenged ways. What is frightening about ethical lapses is not that they happen to the ethically outrageous but that they can sneak up on just about everyone. An informal classroom "experiment" recently performed by this author illustrates that slippery slope. That experience reminded him how hard it is to translate theories of ethics, and even case studies, into practice. The students had read about ethics in leadership, heard about ethics in leadership from a variety of real-world leaders, discussed ethics in leadership, and then apparently totally failed to recognize or at least speak out against unethical behavior when it stared them in the face. Moreover, these were students who by conventional definitions would be classified as gifted. Why is it so hard to translate theory into practice, even after one has studied ethical leadership for several months? In 1970, Bibb Latane and John Darley opened up a new field of research on bystander intervention. They showed that, contrary to expectations, bystanders intervene when someone is in trouble only in very limited circumstances. Drawing in part on Latane and Darley's model of bystander intervention, the author has constructed a model of ethical behavior that applies to a variety of ethical problems. The model's basic premise is that ethical behavior is far harder to display than one would expect simply on the basis of what we learn from parents, school, and religious training. To intervene, to do good, individuals must go through a series of steps, and unless all of the steps are completed, people are not likely to behave ethically, regardless of the ethics training or moral education they have received and the level of other types of relevant skills they might possess, such as critical or creative thinking. The author offers eight steps of behaving ethically and describes how his students responded, or did not respond, to the ethical challenge he presented.