Moral action can also be unethical. A lawyer who tells the court that his client is guilty may be acting out of a moral desire for justice, but this is very unethical because it violates attorney-client privilege. Both morality and ethics have to do vaguely with distinguishing the difference between “good and evil” or “good” and “evil”. Many people think that morality is something personal and prescriptive, while ethics are the standards of “good” and “evil” that are distinguished by a certain community or social environment.
For example, your local community may think that adultery is immoral, and you personally may be okay with that. However, the distinction can be useful if your local community doesn't have strong feelings about adultery, but you consider adultery to be immoral on a personal level. According to these definitions of the terms, their morality would contradict the ethics of their community. However, in popular discourse, we tend to use the terms moral and immoral when we talk about topics such as adultery, regardless of whether it is discussed in a personal or community situation.
As you can see, the distinction can be a bit complicated. For example, the word ethics comes from Old French (etique), late Latin (ethica) and Greek (ethos) and refers to customs or moral philosophies. Some people may believe that they are the same thing or perhaps that morality is just an ethic viewed from a religious perspective. People who serve in the military can suffer moral harm and this can lead to a risk of poor mental health outcomes.
If you listen to how these words are used idiomatically, morality tends to relate to codified social beliefs that are unquestionably received (the use of the term moral majority in the 1960s, for example). Some people believe that following the laws of the country is the best option, while others think that sticking to morals is the greatest good. BetterHelp's licensed therapists have helped clients deal with moral injuries and other conditions associated with morality and ethics. Thus, for example, while everyone thinks that murder is morally wrong, there is controversy about whether abortion is wrong; some people believe that abortion is wrong and others believe that it is morally permissible.
A person's moral code is usually immutable and consistent in all contexts, but it is also possible that certain events radically change a person's personal beliefs and values. However, a person can change their beliefs and morals as they age, which can allow them to live a better life. A lawyer's morals may tell you that murder is reprehensible and that murderers should be punished, but your ethics as a professional lawyer requires you to defend your client as best you can, even if you know that the client is guilty. For example, if I steal someone else's car, there's the act of stealing the car and then there are the consequences of that theft: the owner won't be able to go to work, that will encourage him and others to close things better, they could catch me and jail me, etc.
It's not fair to ask if ethics or morals are more important, because there are situations in which one system applies and the other doesn't. Descriptive ethics describes existing accepted standards of morality, regulatory ethics promotes or advocates the “correct standard of morality”, and metaethics analyzes things such as the meaning and justification of moral judgments.
