Feeding the goats?

A goat scavenging among the garbage outside a site of a company I worked for a decade ago. Now I am at the same point of choice as then.

A new organizational client has just accepted the outrageous fees I proposed for designing and facilitating their stakeholder engagement program during the months it will take to train an internal team to do my work.

But ... can I work with an organization whose business as usual means extracting enormous resources from the environment, leaving desolated areas in their wake and exploiting people throughout their value chain?

I can of course find reasons for both saying yes and saying no.

The part of me that wants the money and the prestige argues that I can do something good even in those circumstances. That I will help distribute wealth to less favoured stakeholders, that the trickle-down will eventually reach the goats ...

The part of me that wants to be on the moral high ground argues that I will help whitewash what is unsustainable and destructive. That I will be like the goat scavenging the garbage ...

For ten years ago I said yes without a doubt. Today, if I am honest with myself, writing this here in public is a way of saying no ...

And it hurts to say no.