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It took me an age to get a job I really liked and enjoyed, but I’d finally got there — a decade after graduating. I’d just been assigned a major website redevelopment project, and thought I was on the cusp of proving my worth.

Simultaneously, we were coming to the end of a very long and emotionally draining adoption process. Nearly two years after we started the assessment, we were matched with a sibling pair. At last, it was all coming together.

Unbeknownst to me, however, my developing career and family life were set on collision course. Due to acute vulnerabilities caused by infant neglect, our social workers asked that I take extended adoption leave as the primary carer.

A moment of joy for our family, you might think, after the stresses of the preceding years. But for me it just added more stress, seemingly striking a blow to my career prospects.

In my mind, the fear was this: my project would be assigned to a temp far more talented than me, who would deliver better results, take all the credit, and ultimately replace me, putting an end to my short-lived career.

But, of course, I had to do what was right — for my family. So it was that my manager arranged cover and assigned the project to them in place of me, handing over all my plans and mock-ups. And off I went to focus on my new calling.

Fortunately, the temp was a dud. In the weeks I was away, they didn’t achieve anything that was of any value to the project at all. So it was that in the end I got to prove my worth in more ways than one.

The moral of the story for me: always do the right thing.