What is, or should be, the role of ethics in giftedness? In this article, I consider why ethical behavior is much harder to come by than one would expect. Ethical behavior requires completion of a series of eight steps to action, the failure of any one of which may result in a person, even one who is ethically well trained, to act in a manner that lacks the translation of ethical knowledge into action. Many people identified as gifted through traditional means are nevertheless lacking in ethics, in part because socialization may not reward them for the development of ethical patterns of behavior. The result has been catastrophic for the world.