November is the month when we Melbournians begin to think our city might just be as beautiful as any other.

The sky is a radiant blue this morning as I walk through the botanical gardens at 8am. Having started my day three hours ago — a run, a cuddle with my nine year old and some brief and rare time with my partner — the quiet walk in the warm spring air offers me a moment to settle the chatter in my mind, put aside the needs of others and grapple with the grey and ambiguous things that sit on my plate.

The day-to-day dilemmas which wrestle with me as I try to decide the right thing to do seem to surface into the light when I am alone and I begin to dance with them from one extreme to another.

The right way to do it.

The right words to use at the right time.

The right thing to do for the right reason.

And the grief that has occupied my heart and mind as I turn my attention to the news each day and see the state of the world we're living in; asking myself each morning if this is as good as humanity gets and if it's okay that we've convinced ourselves that this is good enough.

Today is day two of my five-day attendance at the Cranlana Centre for Ethical Leadership’s Executive Colloquium. An immersion into the overlap of ethics and leadership; and a battle with what it means to be a trusted leader that shapes Australia’s future.

Ten individuals from across the spectrum of Australia’s leadership are in the Colloquium with me. Each of them bringing their own lens and entry point into learning from enduring wisdom and applying that to today’s complex challenges. In the right way, for the right reasons.

What surfaces for me as I’m walking in the sunshine this morning is how flippantly we throw around words like Leadership and Ethics, and how quick we are to call someone a Leader because of their position and how easy it is to think of ourselves as Ethical.

To think otherwise would be antithetical to the costume we dress ourselves in everyday as we go to work.

Good, ethical and purpose-driven; having paid our dues. Creative and pragmatic, with the passion to make positive change. These ideals, forming part of the mythology we create around ourselves that cushions us from the discomfort we must face when things go wrong in our world.

And it is this discomfort that I am learning is the central character in our search for ethical leadership throughout our organisations, our communities, institutions and our society at large. A discomfort that ambiguous, difficult-to-face and tension-filled lurks in areas that are sometimes dark, other times complex and mostly difficult to talk about over the water cooler, in our board rooms and outside the playground while we're waiting for our children.

However we turn the volume down, change the channel, rewrite the headline and push this discomfort into the background in favour of supporting the myths and legends that make us feel good about ourselves.

We are Ethical and we are Leaders and that's OK.

This is good, and that is bad.

We are good, and they are not.

Myths and legends. Labels and False Histories.

Stories that we tell ourselves.

Yet, navigating this discomfort is the pathway to building true character. Wrestling in the grey areas, forcing ourselves to face the darkness and sit in the ambiguity creates in us the ability to see that in fact all we are looking at is ourselves.

And holding this truth — this difficult reality that it is us in those dark, complex spaces — teaches us that we are not outside of the unethical, but rather we are central to it.

See you next week.