It is interesting how the simple message of "do what is right" or "do the right thing" can cause so much mistrust and misunderstanding.  Superficially the statements do provide guidance for a person, but they lack a common definition and understanding of what the right thing is when you get more than one person in the room.  Every individual, society and population have different sets of norms and beliefs and therefore a different understanding of what "right" actually means.  To the person that writes this phrase and then teaches it to others, the definition may be clear from their perspective and their understanding of right and wrong, but in most cases they have not objective examined the definition of "right" and may have simply defaulted to their underlying beliefs that they were taught through childhood experiences.  This reliance on experience and environment is the basis for everyone's definition of "right" if not examined objectively and consciously.  And so it should not be a surprise, then, that different people have different definitions of what is "right."  Instead, we need to have much more detail surrounding the definition of "right" so that it is defined clearly and not left to the interpretation that an individual may have based upon how they were raised.

It's not given to people to judge what's right or wrong. People have eternally been mistaken and will be mistaken, and in nothing more than in what they consider right and wrong.  Leo Tolstoy

Stop doing what is easy or popular. Start doing what is right.  Roy T. Bennett

Wisdom and knowledge exist so we can distinguish right from wrong.  Rumi