Dilemma
The Brief
Make 470,000 people care about mandatory ethics training
Ethics and compliance training was slipping down the priority list. Across 150 countries, Deloitte needed to find a way to make people genuinely engage with the subject — not just complete it. The ask was clear: don’t just inform. Make people care.
The Solution
Stop teaching. Start telling stories
Instead of another compliance module, we created Dilemma — a multi-season drama series that brings ethical dilemmas to life through compelling characters and real-world scenarios. Storytelling that makes you feel the weight of the decision before you’re asked to make it.
457,000 people. 150 countries. The stakes couldn’t be higher.
Ethics training across a global professional services firm is one of the most complex communication challenges in business. The content is legally sensitive. The audience is vast, dispersed, and sceptical. And the consequences of getting it wrong are measured in regulatory fines, reputational damage, and real human harm. The professional services sector had faced billions in compliance-related penalties in recent years. Deloitte’s existing programme had high completion rates in name, but post-training knowledge retention and behavioural change had plateaued.
Deloitte didn’t need another e-learning module. They needed something that would cut through the noise, spark genuine conversation, and make ethics feel personal — not procedural.
Previous approaches had struggled to land with authenticity. The subject matter demands nuance — real ethical dilemmas rarely have clean answers — and any content had to survive legal review across multiple jurisdictions without losing its emotional truth.
We needed to find a format that could carry complexity without simplifying it. Something people would choose to watch, not just be told to complete.
Season Trailers
Synopsis: When a client asks a bright young consultant for a favor, he must decide whether to stand up for what's right or risk upsetting someone who could affect his career – all while dealing with intense pressures at home.
Synopsis: A secret deal puts friendship and loyalty to the test. When the stakes are so high, who can you really trust?
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Our Approach
Craft it like a drama series. Because that’s what it is.
We treated this like a genuine production. Months of pre-production. Character matrices built around real ethical fault lines. Scripts developed through a rigorous process that balanced dramatic truth with legal and compliance accuracy across every jurisdiction.
We filmed across London, working with professional actors and directors to create something that felt like a drama you’d choose to watch — not something mandated by your employer.
Alongside the drama series, we produced roundtable discussion films — bringing together senior ethics leaders from across Deloitte’s global network to explore the themes raised in each episode.
The combination works because it operates on two levels: the drama creates empathy and emotional connection; the roundtables provide context, authority, and a bridge to real-world application. Together, they turn passive compliance into active conversation.
The Series
A multi-season drama that people choose to watch
Each season tackles a distinct set of ethical dilemmas — from conflicts of interest and data privacy to workplace culture and whistleblowing. The stories are designed to provoke discussion, not deliver answers.
With season three now in production, Dilemma has become Deloitte’s most successful learning programme — proof that when you respect your audience enough to tell them a story, they’ll engage with even the most complex subjects.
Season One
Season Two
Key Project Assets
Multi-Season Drama Series
A cinematic ethics training programme built like prestige television. Each season explores distinct ethical dilemmas through compelling characters and real-world scenarios, designed to provoke genuine conversation across the firm.
Global Ethics Leader Roundtable Films
Senior ethics leaders from across Deloitte’s global network come together to explore the themes raised in each episode — bridging drama with real-world application and providing authority and context.
150-Country Deployment Framework
A robust deployment and localisation framework ensuring the series lands with impact and legal compliance across every jurisdiction — from the Americas to Asia-Pacific, Europe to Africa.
Impact
Dilemma didn’t just meet its training targets — it fundamentally changed how Deloitte’s people engage with ethics. The programme generated organic praise on Reddit and internal social channels, increased enquiries to ethics advisors, and became the benchmark for what mandatory training can be.
Award-winning work that set a new standard
Cannes Corporate Media & TV Awards · Brandon Hall Gold — Best Compliance Training 2025 · New York TV & Film Festival Awards
Project Insights
From obligation to conversation
The lesson of Dilemma is deceptively simple: if you want people to engage with difficult subjects, you have to earn their attention. Not demand it. Mandatory training fails because it treats the audience as a problem to be managed. Dilemma succeeds because it treats them as people worth telling a story to.
What started as a single-season experiment has become a multi-season programme with organic advocacy across the firm. People don’t just complete Dilemma — they talk about it. They recommend it. They ask when the next season is coming. That’s the difference between compliance and culture.
Ethics training that people actually want to watch. That was the bar we set — and the team delivered something that exceeded every expectation. When your mandatory training generates organic praise on Reddit, you know you’ve done something different.
Paul Mallaghan, Director of Creative Strategy & Content — We Are Tilt
