I would say Susan has it close, but the divide is a little different -- between moral codes promulgated for agreement, and ethical standards based on one's own integrity and view of things and their rightness and wrongness based on an inherent sense of ethicality.

Moral codes are good for educating, good for controlling people when they are immature, and good for meme-propagaation. But the only truly resilient, flexible, and renewable source of right/wrong assessments is individual integrity.

Corruption can be defined two ways, in broad -- a violation of established codes one is supposed to subscribe to, or a violation of the ethics of a situation. Sometimes they intersect, sometimes not. Reducing ethics to a code which is supposed to be transferable across all situations and apply to them without exception is an untenable and futile porposition. The best you can hope for is general guidelines.

For example, while lying "is unethical" according to Rapaire's doctrine above, I can easily imagine a scenario (being captured by Bolshevist terrorists, for example) where a little adroit lying could do a LOT more good than just telling the truth. Thus, fixed-value codes can always lead you astray under some circumstances. Your own integrity is more likely to steer you right in murky passages.

A