Does the baby factor into the business deal?

"Guilt is supposed to guide us back to our moral compass I had always thought," writes D.C., a reader from the Midwest. She feels "inexplicably really guilty" and is concerned that she may have done something wrong in recent business dealings with the owner of a property she is leasing to run a lodge that will open later this year.

D.C. agreed to the lease back in February. She has paid half of the cost of the lease already (tens of thousands of dollars, she indicates) and is "wholeheartedly committed to setting up the lodge." She is committed to finding lodge guests by investing in marketing and advertising.

Sometime after they'd agreed on the details of the lease, but before all of the paperwork had been signed, D.C. found out she was pregnant. It was unplanned, she writes, a "miracle" that has her over the moon about what will be her first child after a long wait.

"I chose not to tell the property owner about my pregnancy for two reasons," she writes. "First, it was my private health information, and second, pregnant women and mothers have the right to work and I did not want her to give her a chance to discriminate against me."

With just a few months to go before the hotel is to open and the final paperwork still not complete, the owner of the property somehow found out about the pregnancy and is outraged.

"I don't know how she found out," writes D.C. "It is possible she may even try to negate our agreement."

When she found out she was pregnant, D.C. hired an au pair and two extra staff members because she intended to keep on working and thought it prudent to hire the child care assistance she knows she'll need.

"I intend to work just as hard and do just as great a job now that I am going to have a child," writes D.C. "It is my reputation and my dream. I have standards and take them seriously. I hope to be able to tell my daughter I still followed my dreams even though she was coming and that even though it was hard, I provided for her and did it doing what I loved."

She wouldn't have told an employer about the pregnancy, but she reminds me that this woman is the owner of the property she is leasing, not an employer. Still, D.C. has an outstanding financial obligation to her since one half of the lease payment is still due during the term of the lease and doesn't want anything to sour her relationship.

"Did I do something wrong?" asks D.C.

Absolutely not.

D.C. did the right thing by taking steps to ensure that she could honor her business agreement once she learned of her pregnancy. The pregnancy itself should not be of any concern to the property owner as long as D.C. meets her obligations.

Any guilt D.C. might feel is likely the result of the property owner's outraged response that caught D.C. off guard. It's normal to question your own actions when someone feels something so viscerally in response.

But D.C.'s moral compass led her to be responsible and do everything she could to meet her obligations. Someday, her daughter can respond with pride about how her mother acted.

Jeffrey L. Seglin, author of The Right Thing:Conscience, Profit and Personal Responsibility in Today's Business, is a lecturer in public policy and director of the communications program at Harvard's Kennedy School.

Do you have ethical questions that you need answered? Send them to rightthing@comcast.net.

(c) 2011 JEFFREY L. SEGLIN. Distributed by Tribune MediaServices, Inc.