How do I treat people fairly at work when the system is unfair?

You want to treat people justly, but self-interest tugs at you and the system itself is often unfair, which makes doing right feel like swimming upstream. That struggle is honest. The people who never feel it are usually the ones who have quietly stopped trying to be fair at all. You cannot fix the whole unfair system, and pretending you can will only exhaust you. But you are not powerless either. In your own conduct, in how you treat the person in front of you, you get to decide whether you add to the unfairness or push against it. That much is genuinely yours. Start where your reach actually is. Pick one relationship at work where self-interest has been nudging you to be less than fair, and correct it this week. Give the credit you were tempted to keep, or the honesty you were tempted to withhold. Justice grows from choices that small, made by people willing to make them.