Great Potential Cost

Moral bankruptcy: the state a person reaches when he trades away or violates too many of his core moral values and commitments.  He may also lose important relationships either as a cause or consequence of his loss of moral commitments.  Someone who is morally bankrupt may or may not recognize that he has reached this state. 

Some people may never recognize they have reached the point of moral bankruptcy.  Denial, the first cousin of rationalization, functions to maintain a person's perception of reality.  Denial helps a person to maintain a fiction in the cold light of fact.  Denial is a perversely remarkable creative ability that carries a great potential cost. 

-- Peg O'Connor, Ph.D., professor of philosophy and gender, women, and sexuality studies at Gustavus Adolphus College in St. Peter, MN, Declaring Moral Bankruptcy, Psychology Today, 31 October 2014