At the start of every public health ethics course I teach, I give my students a list of questions to explore, but leave the most important one until last: ‘What kind of society do we want to be?’ I want them to circle back to this thought, no matter the topic, to instil in them the understanding that public health practice and policy are always based on value judgments. Our job, as ethicists, is not always to provide the right answer, but to clarify the values and interests embedded in our decision making.