Ethical failures in UK higher education have recently made the news but are not a recent development. University decision-makers can, in order to adopt an ethical way of reasoning, resort to several ethical traditions. This article focuses, through the use of concrete examples, on three which have had a significant impact in recent higher education policy: utilitarianism, in the form of stakeholder theory; principled theory, used in ethical codes of conduct; and virtue ethics, as interpreted by role model theory. It is argued that, although these traditions help clarify the immoral content of a decision, they also have their limits and shortcomings, and give a naive illusion of certainty. The moral reasoning of university decision-makers would instead benefit more from engaging with a theory less known in public management circles. It is the "dirty hands" theory used in political theory, which helps stress the centrality of choice and judgement in decision-making.