The following is an excerpt from The Princeton Review’s best selling title, Business School Essays That Made a Difference.

Being a great storyteller and a gifted writer can be a major advantage to the prospective b-school student. But be forewarned: A wonderful answer to a question not asked will not help you here. We can’t stress enough that you must answer the question.

Each school has its own set of questions. Although posed differently, all search for the same insights. Here’s one commonly asked question and what’s behind it.

Theme: Ethics

Describe an ethical issue you have faced in your professional life and how you dealt with it. What was the outcome?

Translation:

Do you even know what an ethical dilemma looks like? Are you tomorrow’s corporate miscreant? What kinds of decisions and judgments might you make in your future practices as a business leader?

The last few years have brought attention to the ethical issues of the business world and the failure of corporate self-governance. In the aftermath of the recent financial meltdown, b-schools don’t want to turn out graduates who are fast into their suspenders, fast into a deal, and fast to swindle their clients and shareholders.

The above question tests your judgment, integrity, and perspective. It’s most important to present a legitimate ethical dilemma here, one that has consequences. Applicants often write about the dilemma of not obeying a supervisor’s orders because they wanted to do things their way, a known better way. But this is not an ethics problem (unless the order was improper or illegal); it’s a management problem. Likewise, handing in a report to your boss that you know is full of errors is also not an ethical problem; it’s a trivial, single-impact, easy-to-fix problem.

If you were thinking of telling a story like one of those mentioned above, it may be because you wanted to play it safe. This is one of those uncomfortable, hot-seat essays after all. But playing it safe here would only make you appear clueless or morally bereft.

This essay requires you to roll up your ethical shirtsleeves and get down in the dirt. True ethical issues are neither clean nor pretty. Don’t shrink away from a discussion of failure here or present an overly optimistic, no-loose-ends solution.

It’s key that you write about an ethical dilemma in which there was no easy course—one that entailed costs either way. For example, let’s say you sold a product to a client and later discovered the product was faulty; your employer wanted you to keep mum. You’d built your sales relationships on trust and personal attention, so you wanted to be forthcoming. What did you do?

This essay must show that you can work through a complex ethical impasse, and it must highlight your sense of honor and conduct. This essay screams relevance. Make sure you shout back that you know right from wrong.