Have you ever felt that there were two (or more) things that you should do, but that you couldn't do both, and that there was no good way to decide which thing was more important? Chances are, you were experiencing an ethical or moral dilemma.
These dilemmas can sometime be heart-wrenching and traumatic. In the novel & film, Sophie's Choice, a mother has to choose which of her children will live, and which will die at the hands of her Nazi captors (this is reputed to have been inspired by a real event, but I need to re-read at least one Hannah Arendt book to track this down). More recently, and most certainly outside of fiction, a mother caught in the 2004 Boxing Day tsunami had to make a tough decision on which of her children she would try to save when the wave hit.
More modestly, the conflict between professional or legal obligations, and a person's own moral standards is a common source of seemingly intractable ethical problems. Teachers may feel more or less morally obligated to punish misbehaving children than they are expected/required to. Police officers may arrest people for breaking laws they don't feel reflect their personal sense of justice. Even people working in retail might feel that they should tell a customer to not purchase something, (or at least not try to up-sell) - at the same time as feeling that they are equally good reasons to maximise the sale.
Despite what utilitarians and fans of Kant will tell you, I don't think there is a single easy formula for figuring out what to do in these tricky situations. But there are a few things you can keep in mind.
Is it really a dilemma? Are you really equally obligated to do choose both option, or is it just a hard decision?
What is causing the dilemma? What historical events or past decisions have led to you being caught between competing obligations? Is there someway to address the root cause? Maybe you'll figure out a new angle on the problem and find a good solution. But even if it doesn't get you out of your current bind, it will help you, and others, avoid it in future. It's a pet theory of mine that serious ethical dilemmas and conflicts are preceded by other moral failures or injustices - though as the tsunami example shows, this may not always be an injustice you can do anything about.
Can I actually do both things? If yes, then great! If not, then don't be too hard on yourself. There's a slogan attributed to Kant - 'should implies can'. As I've mentioned previously, this means that if you can't do something, you can't be morally obligated to do it. So, if you have two mutually exclusive and equally weighted options, know this: You might be in a crappy situation, but if you choose one option, you've done all you could. Demanding more than that is emotionally appealing, but you aren't doing the wrong thing by failing to do the impossible.
Much of the recent research I've read lately - most notably Meira Levinson's work on educational ethics - seems to say the best thing people can do is think about and talk through examples of dilemmas that are found in their professional context. This is supposed to help you develop an eye for the nuance of difficult moral situations, as well as an overall heuristic for dealing with them. I'm keen to test Levinson's ideas, but I can't see how familiarity with potential problems and giving your brain a workout is bad advice.
That, for the moment, is as good as my general advice on these decisions gets: Try to figure out if the choices really are equally good/bad, investigate what might have caused them, don't be too hard on yourself, and try to familiarise yourself with potential dilemmas relevant to your work/professional situation.
As always, thanks for reading. Feel free to leave feedback/questions - including ethical dilemmas you might have found yourself in - in the comments below.