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So the third challenge for the working person is: how can you stay true to your moral, ethical, or religious values?

For many people, this means consciously searching for a company whose values are congruent with their values. A friend who manages investments for a multinational corporation told me that he was glad the values he prized—integrity, honesty, rectitude— were precisely what was valued in his world of long-term investing. “If you’re dishonest, your reputation and therefore effectiveness will suffer,” he explained.

But what happens when you work in an environment where, say, compassion is not valued or, worse, is ignored? Finding work in a new company or a different position in your current workplace may not be feasible or even possible.

Part of the solution may lie in maintaining Ignatian detachment from the unhealthy values of the workplace. If you work in an environment that prizes aggressive or downright mean behavior, you need not be aggressive or mean. (Religious institutions are not entirely immune to these sorts of behaviors.) Often a superior level of work can overcome the perceived need to participate in activities that go against your moral grain. Talent can sometimes trump aggression and meanness.

You might also act, as mentioned above, as a leaven of change in an unethical environment, doing your part and hoping that your leaven may help to encourage change. “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world,“ wrote the anthropologist Margaret Mead. ”Indeed it is the only thing that ever has.”

Likewise, you might be entirely unable to change anything yet still able to help others in their struggles. To take an extreme example, St. Peter Claver, the Jesuit who ministered to the slaves in seventeenth-century Cartagena, did not end the slave trade. But he was able to care for those who were trapped in that sinful system by distributing food and counseling to slaves on board the ships that had arrived in the center of the African slave trade in the New World.

In other words, one of the simplest ways we can find meaning in work is by being kind to those who are struggling—the mother working two minimum-wage jobs; the secretary beleaguered by her tyrannical boss; the underappreciated janitor. To put it in Ignatian language, can you see yourself as someone who could “help souls” at work?

Or you might consider it your duty to act prophetically by standing up against the injustice around you. Are there times when you need to gather up your courage to do the right thing? Here the believer remembers the duty to care for all of God’s creatures, no matter where they are on the corporate ladder. The Christian remembers the call of Jesus to care for the “least of these” our brothers and sisters. The Catholic remembers the social encyclicals of the church that ask us to stand for the rights of the poor and marginalized. And the follower of the way of Ignatius remembers Third Degree of Humility, where you choose to stand with those who are persecuted.

You may need to sacrifice some upward mobility in exchange for a clear conscience, since most workplaces rarely reward the prophet. One lawyer friend put it bluntly, “I don’t expect to make partner, because I don’t play the games that others play, but I don’t really want that; it’s not good for me.” If you are working in a corporation that prizes selfishness, you might have to choose between advancement and values. If you are more fortunate, you will be able to find a company whose values match your own.

Discerning your response to ethical questions can be aided by some Ignatian questions from the last chapter: What would you recommend to someone in a similar situation? What would you have wanted to do, from the vantage point of your deathbed? What would your “best self” do?

The Ignatian triad of “riches to honors to pride” can also shed some light here. Salary and wealth are the ultimate measures of value in our culture. That is one reason why salary is a taboo topic