When Systems Cause Harm: Understanding Moral Injury Beyond Burnout

For years, we have relied on the language of burnout to explain why people are struggling at work.

Burnout suggests exhaustion. Overload. Too much pressure for too long. And while those things are real, they are often not the full story.

Increasingly, people are not unravelling because they are tired.They are unravelling because they are being asked to act against what they know to be right.

This is moral injury.

Moral injury occurs when individuals are placed in roles or systems where their values are repeatedly compromised — where they are unable to prevent harm, speak honestly, or act with integrity, even when the consequences are clear. It is not a failure of resilience. It is a failure of systems.

Burnout asks, “How much can a person carry?”Moral injury asks, “What are we asking people to carry that they should never have to?”

Across institutions and workplaces, moral injury shows up when:

• process overrides judgement

  
  

• accountability is fragmented

  
  

• harm is foreseeable but unaddressed

  
  

• people are instructed to comply despite ethical discomfort

  
  

Over time, this erodes trust — not just in leadership, but in the meaning of the work itself.

Importantly, moral injury is rarely caused by bad actors. It emerges inside systems full of capable, well-intentioned people doing their best within constraints. But good intent does not prevent harm when structure, culture, and power are misaligned.

Large-scale system failures are rarely accidental.They are often the cumulative result of moments where moral discomfort is normalised, deferred, or silenced.

If we continue to frame these experiences as burnout alone, we miss the opportunity for prevention. We focus on coping instead of responsibility. We individualise what is, at heart, a collective problem.

Understanding moral injury allows us to ask better questions — earlier:Where are people being prevented from acting with integrity?What harms are already visible, even if they have not yet fully surfaced?

This is leadership work — long before crisis makes the cost undeniable.