It seems apparent that all causes are like this, and that this would require an ever-present element of skepticism to any morally clear action such as this. In this sense the difference my colleague was speaking of would be a tertiary quality and incomplete or ill-defined by a set of net causes. Would you agree? — kudos

I have to translate this to make sense of it:
- It seems apparent that all results are like this, and so an ever-present questioning is needed to cut a clear path to moral clarity. In this sense, what my colleague was taking about - a difference that by some criterion makes no difference - is not necessarily well defined by the criterion used, and may call out for different criteria. In any case, evaluation by limited criteria can often not be a complete evaluation.

And I think that answers your question. That is, it often happens that a question well-asked contains its own answer, that was obscured by the original question. Point?

Thanks Tim, yes your translation makes sense. Where this became a problem for me was the antagonism between practicality and skepticism. It actually made more practical sense to do poor quality work, so our inclinations would lead us to believe we should. But even if we have a complete set of reasons that extends as far as we can think of, the perceived causality can be broken down to higher resolution and examined in more detail. So even the most clear reasons aren't complete.

To do otherwise would be to drown all mystery in probabilities, the chances that something were to be beneficial to company trumping any alternate cause. The proposition gets around this by using the cause itself as a sum total of alternate causes like below:

EVENT GOOD WORK (cause)---> NO FINANCIAL IMPACT (effect)-----> OBSERVATION (effect)

changes to

EVENT GOOD WORK {INCREASING SKILLS, SETTING EXAMPLE TO OTHER EMPLOYEES, OTHER PEOPLE, etc}---> CLIENT SATISFIED, END USER EXPERIENCE IMPROVED, MORE LONG TERM BUSINESS, WORSE TIME MANAGEMENT, etc -----> OBSERVATION

Another equivalent would be

TEST EXPERIMENT COMPLETE (cause) ----> KILL TEST RAT POPULATION (effect) ----> NO PERCEIVED PROBLEM (effect)

changes to

TEST EXPERIMENT COMPLETE---> KILL TEST RATS {cause rats pain in death, reduce empathy towards animals and humans through some real factor, etc}---> TEST EXPERIMENTS LOSE GOAL OF GREATER GOOD DUE TO REDUCED OVERALL EMOTIONAL RESPONSE

When I am adding in these new details they too are based on the same physical phenomena that generated the cause that was a pure and acceptable reasoning. To express the cause in terms of their net effects, these internal forces were filtered out. These are the kinds of reasons that in the real world usually make people say "Are you serious? Give me a Break!" The question was, is it worthwhile to bother considering them?

Other people's ethics, understood as rules that you cannot make your own - take ownership of - simply stand a rules. But you can always excavate in the sense of asking what it means to you, how it works for you, is it best for you, and so forth. There is even the Kantian consideration, can the rule you adopt also be a rule for everyone (without the whole thing ultimately coming tumbling down)?

In short, it's your life; what's best for it, for you? My own experience is that there is always a benefit in doing best, even if the reward is deferred and not immediate.

I'm both glad and unhappy you brought Kant up, as it goes back to already expounded arguments from his work. It seems to be that it often goes in the real world that those 'gross causes' are either too heavily weighed or considered completely absent. When you go to make a case for them taking their due weight you find them becoming more and more of an abstraction. The gross causes are the same as any net cause, but take effect through the sum of many disparate parts rather than as a single unified cause. So if we are to make any real headway towards their consideration, it would be expedient to pursue a type of skepticism about causes or else find yourself chasing some perfect 20/20 vision that doesn't exist.