Yes I think that being ethical makes it hard to be successful. In most situations in the world you have to do whatever it takes to succeed even if it does mean double-crossing someone. Most people try to be ethical because they want to be able to follow their morale values. But by being ethical you play the nice guy and from a quote I have heard it was "nice guys never win" which suggest that you always have to cheat or do something unethical to succeed.
Being ethical means relating morale principles which means relating to morale values. So when your ethical your playing by the book and not trying to find a cheat way around it. For example a student that studies really hard for a test may receive a B for their efforts. On the other however the student that slacks off and cheats off other people may receive an A. The student that was ethical didn’t receive the same grade that the cheater did. By being ethical the student received a B but the student that cheated didn’t want to lose or receive a bad grade so they did whatever it took to get that A.
Being ethical is saying that you play by the book and you’re a class act. However these people aren’t always the ones that succeed in what they do. Professional athletes are also faced with this dilemma. Athletes salaries are based on their performances and some athletes do whatever it takes to get that big raise so they use Performance enhancing drugs instead of working harder. The drugs enhance your performance much faster than that of the "ethical" guy that goes to the weight room and works his butt off. This is another incident where someone did whatever it took to achieve victory.
Being ethical does make it hard to be successful. Most people think that they need to do anything possible to become successful even if it means going against their moral values. The ethical guy though fails much more because they aren’t cheating there way to the top, but as people say "If your not cheating, your not trying."
