As the senior most civil servant in the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Mountain State, Jay Adan was required to approve any new recruits hired in the interior ministry. When he received a list of candidates recommended for vacant posts in the Mountain State Emergency Services, one of his ministry’s departments, he suspected that the recruitment had not been meritocratic. His personal investigation suggested that the candidates chosen were unqualified, and that more candidates were being recruited than the number of actual vacancies. Patronage was a rampant issue in the region, and political leaders frequently used recruitment cycles to garner support among voters before elections. Adan believed it was likely that the minister of internal affairs was interfering with the recruitment to recommend individuals from his key constituencies in time for elections. Adan considered it unethical to approve a corrupt process, but explicitly rejecting the list could cost him his career and jeopardise the important projects he was working on. Running out of time and options, Adan needed to decide what to do.