Could you help someone figure out how to continue a behavior you don't approve of?

I would tell them that I can not, in good conscious, support a “poor” decision. When my words can affect a situation I’m not directly involved with, I take the Switzerland approach- neutrality. I suppose if it was someone I’m responsible for (e.g. child, student, apprentice, employee), I would make sure they understood the implications of the situation.

You have mixed up two different cases: questions regarding harm to others, and questions about protecting the truth of oneself.

When the question are parsed as I have done above, the answer to your question is much easier. We can condemn attempts to deceive or harm others, but defend a deception to protect oneself or one’s family. I would absolutely help a young person who was in great fear of parent’s learning of sexual orientation. I would never support deception of someone who committed a sexually abusive act.

Even a crime intended for the benefit of saving a life is wrong; this is not Les Miserables, society has set safeguards so one does not have to do that.

This depends on each persons morals. If someone came in and asked how to infect others with a computer virus, or things like that, I would not help.

However…

I’ll tell you how to keep your parents from finding out you are gay. (it’s your business)

I’ll tell you how to avoid people finding out you spent time in jail, (if you did your time you deserve a clean start).

I’ll tell you how to get away with stealing 10k from your boss if you used it for your childs hospital bills. (life > material goods).

I could not answer it to help in that way.
I would want to know more about why they are thinking that way and see if there was a better solution to the issue.

Lying for a start will bring more lies in the picture.

There are ways of hiding the truth from coming out but after a while you will be the one revealing it .. I think it’s the guilt but I’m not sure.

These specific questions, (and I know you said not to answer them… but here’s my thinking sorry)—

How can I keep my parents from finding out I’m gay?—Depending on where they live, what their parents believe, they may be disowned, kicked out of the house at too young an age, etc. I think it’s terrible if they have to hide it, but if they do… who am I, in my comfortable life, to tell them to tell? If they want to tell, or are scared but in a safe situation, that’s different. More would be needed.

How can I keep people from finding out I spent time in jail for armed robbery (or embezzlement or drug selling)? If they’re a con man, looking to steal more and destroy people’s lives, that’s one thing—but I doubt a con man would need help concealing their intent. More likely, they made a mistake in their life, or were desperate, have moved on, but society won’t; if people found out what they did, people would refuse to trust them, employers refuse to hire them, etc, regardless of their own abilities and [current] morals.

I took $10K from my employer so I could get my daughter hospital care. How can I avoid being caught? Desperate. Not the correct thing to do in a long stretch, but perhaps they really did have no other option. In a way, that makes them dedicated, and (aside from the stealing) a potentially good employee, going to any means necessary… Also, it depends on how much $10,000 is to the company. Again, need more information. When my mom’s mom died, my mom was devastated. Angry, too, that she couldn’t do anything. Said if she could have found an opportunity, she would have done anything [not including hurting people] to even just get her mom out of pain.

In general, it depends on how much I don’t approve, and how much the particular situation they find themselves in warrants it. I’m trying to give examples of when I wouldn’t, but even then I keep coming up with situations that break the absolutely-never-here. So I don’t know, it really all depends. I guess, if they’re being an idiot, and/or lazy, that would be when I would never help.

No.they are on their own.

What other people do is really none of my business. I will not go out of my way to force mu opinions on what they do or don’t do. Personal matters are a whole other tomato though.

If I think something’s wrong, I can’t help someone do it. I will usually keep my nose out of it when such questions are asked here, but occassionally I do speak up. I try to be kind and understand where the person is coming from. I usually only speak up if they seem confused and conflicted and not if they are convinced of what they want to do.

I only give advice now when asked. And even then, I double check on asker’s sensibilities.

The one area I no longer get near is responding when a friend asks me to read his novel, play, short story or poem. Thin thin ice.

I just like to sit back and watch stupidity at its finest.

Probably. It really depends on why they’re doing it – like I would have no problem helping someone figure out how to keep that they’re gay from their parents if their parents would become abusive, or kick them out, etc. That particular one I’d have no problem with even if the parents weren’t abusive, because I believe that shouldn’t be something you have to tell anyone seeing as how it’s so private.. But if I knew I wasn’t going to be helpful to them, I’d probably just say “look, I’m just going to tell you to blank, so I’m probably not the best person to ask this.”

Helping a person keep the fact that they are gay from their parents is in no way related to or the same type of thing as trying to help a person cheat on their spouse, or to help a person continue to steal money from their employer.

Gay people are not doing anything wrong by being gay, but sometimes they will get beaten, disowned, dis-respected or shunned if certain people (like their parents) found out about it. So if the gay person needs some assistance keeping their sexuality a secret, I would likely help them to do that, and then direct them to some sources like PFLAG to help them deal with their situation and possibly help their parents deal with it sometime down the line.

If somebody asked me for advice on how to keep their adultery secret from their spouse, it would depend upon how close I was to the asker or their spouse. If it was somebody who was merely an acquaintence, I would suggest that they either divorce their spouse or get into marriage counseling, but I would tell them that cheating is wrong, and it doesn’t make any difference what cock and bull story they’ve made up to try to justify it and continue the cheating. People that cheat, usually have grandiose ideas of entitlement and see themselves as different from other people that cheat. And they tend not to see, and not want to see the damage that their cheating is causing to other people. If the cheater was my personal friend, I would try to help them to figure out a way to tell her husband, and then help her research therapists to either get into couples counseling or to seek individual counseling to find out why she has this compulsion to cheat. I would also tell her that if she didn’t come clean to her husband, then we could not in good conscience, remain friends. If the person being cheated upon was my friend, but I knew that his spouse was cheating on him, I would try talking to the cheating spouse and let them know that if they didn’t tell my friend the truth (in X amount of days) then I would tell him myself. Then I would be there for my friend to try and help him through the awful situation. I would expect that my friends would tell me if I had a cheating spouse. It would be horrific to find out down the line that my friends knew all about it, but kept that vital information from me.

If someone came to me and told me that they had imbezzled or stolen money from the company, I would tell them straight out that they need to come clean, or that I would go to the HR manager at the company, or go to the authorities with the information.

In the last two scenarios, it doesn’t matter what the cheater and the thief want from me. I have to do the right thing, regardless of their feelings.

I would probably be able to help out with the first two dilemmas you describe. Neither of these things are really anyone else’s business and who am I to judge them. The gay child would have a good idea if coming out to his/her parents would cause so much trouble as to make sharing the information a bad choice. I would support that choice and if I felt I had any helpful advice I would offer it. As for the ex-convict, as long as they did their time and weren’t out to do the same thing again, I would support their decision to keep their prison record private and again offer advice if asked and if I felt I had anything helpful to add (which I probably wouldn’t). As for the third one, I couldn’t be complicit and as @Kardamom would suggest they take responsibility for what they did immediately.

I would refuse to help someone along in doing something that was against my moral code. I would do so because helping them along would make me an accomplice and if I am an accomplice I am willingly engaging in a behavior that goes against my moral code. If I am not willing to certain things, it seems very incongruent for me to help someone else do them.

The harder part of the question for me is whether I would chastise the person and try to talk them out of it or just hold my tongue. I think I would try to highlight the reasons it might not be a great choice for them and hope they did the right thing.

The only advice I could offer is that the best way to keep a secret is to never talk about it to anyone, ever. Except perhaps a therapist. Which is not me.