There is little doubt that the roles and responsibilities of school leaders in most countries across the world have become more complex and challenging in recent years (Cranston, 2007; Billot, Goddard & Cranston, 2007). In large part, this has resulted from the discontinuously changing contexts and day-to-day dynamics within which principals lead their schools. Indeed, principals are now faced with having to make a plethora of decisions in an environment of competing priorities, and with consideration for the interests of students, teachers, parents and the school and wider community. Many of these decisions present as dilemmas for principals, where the choices for action often involve not just choosing from ‘right’ versus ‘wrong’ alternatives, but frequently ‘right’ versus ‘right’ alternatives (Kidder, 1995). Underlying many such decisions are issues of vales, principals and ethics. That is, dilemmas of an ethical nature arise such that principals enter a complex minefield of decision-making where significant implications and consequences result for not only those at the core of the particular decision, but also potentially for the wider school community and beyond. This paper explores this complex area of ethical dilemmas faced by school leaders by firstly examining some of the relevant literature of ethics and ethical dilemmas. This literature was used by the authors as a framework to develop a model for mapping and understanding ethical dilemmas faced by school leaders. The model (Cranston, Ehrich & Kimber, 2006) identifies the ‘antecedents’ that might typically exist prior to an ethical dilemma arising, such as the culture of the school, community expectations and legal and policy frameworks. Also noted here are the values and beliefs of the principal as the key decision maker, critical to how the response to the ethical dilemma is eventually constructed. The model then identifies the potential pathways emanating from the decision about the ethical dilemma and highlights that from such decisions, various consequences flow. Notably, in many such instances, precedents are likely to be set for similar ethical dilemmas arising in the future. The paper then discusses the application of the model as an analytical tool to explain the findings of research undertaken with a small sample of principals from schools in the state of Queensland, Australia. All principals were from large non-government (independent) schools in Brisbane. The principals volunteered to be involved in the research, each responding to an invitation to participate in the project placed in a publication distributed to non-government schools across Queensland. Using semi-structured in-depth interviews (Minichello et al, 1990), the principals were invited to talk about one or more ethical dilemmas they felt they had been confronted with. The interviews, of about one hour duration, were recorded with the approval of the interviewees, with transcripts returned to participants for checking and final endorsement. The interview data were then reviewed in light of the model. The research highlighted that, as one interviewee noted, “ethical dilemmas are the bread and butter of principals’ work”. Indeed, all principals had no difficulty in identifying an ethical dilemma to talk about, with several indicating they had needed to choose from among a number to talk about for the purposes of the interview. It is clear that principals do struggle regularly with decisions where ethical dilemmas are evident, many such dilemmas arising because there are essentially equally attractive alternatives from which to choose and where the principals’ own values are ‘put to the test’. Importantly, the consequences of decision(s) taken in such cases also often add to the challenges. Given the commonalities across schools in many countries today, the findings of this research are likely to have wide applicability for our understandings of principals’ work.

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