Beating the system or cheating it? I set out to learn the ethics of secretly working multiple remote jobs.

• Over the past two years, I've interviewed more than two dozen people secretly working multiple remote jobs.
• In response, I often get emails from readers who believe the practice is unethical.
• Ethics academics and consultants said overemployment raises ethical concerns and may create conflicts of interest.

Some Americans are secretly working multiple full-time remote jobs simultaneously. Whether it's beating the system or cheating depends on who you ask.

Over the past two years, I've interviewed more than two dozen "overemployed" people, many of whom work in the IT and tech sectors. These people have doubled and tripled their earnings by juggling multiple roles simultaneously, and used their extra income to travel the world, buy expensive weight loss drugs, and pay off their student debt.

These stories have drawn a wide range of reactions from readers. Some people have commended these job jugglers for finding a way to maximize their earnings and job security. Others have argued that these workers are taking advantage of their employers — getting full-time pay without giving full-time attention — and holding jobs that unemployed Americans need.

I asked four ethics academics and consultants to weigh in on the debate. The consensus: Secretly juggling multiple full-time remote jobs isn't ethical, but the motivations behind it are understandable.

A question of contracts

Several of the sources Business Insider spoke with said the ethics question often starts with whether an employee has a contract and what it says.

Todd Haugh, an associate professor of business law and ethics at Indiana University, said that if an employee's contract stipulates that they must work exclusively for their employer, it'd be hard to argue that it's ethical for them to work another job.

However, Haugh said most workers in the US are "at will" employees who don't have formal employee contracts, which generally allows them to be fired or quit at any time. He thinks many job jugglers are likely breaching their employer's implied expectation that they'll focus fully on only one job during work hours. Even if a worker doesn't have a formal contract that prohibits job juggling, Haugh said they could be fired if they're found out.

"We expect that if you took a job with one company, you work for just that company," he said. "You're going to give your full attention, time, and energy to that particular company."

Jeffrey Moriarty, executive director of the Hoffman Center for Business Ethics at Bentley University, feels similarly.

"When you promise to work during certain hours for an employer, you implicitly promise not to work for another employer during that time period," he said, adding that job juggling likely involves lying and deception, behaviors generally frowned upon from an ethical standpoint.

Moriarty said workers likely wouldn't appreciate it if their employer started violating implicit agreements without their consent. For example, by paying them in a "wheelbarrow full of pennies" instead of the direct deposit they assumed was a given, he said.

Elizabeth Anderson, a professor of public philosophy at the University of Michigan and author of "Value in Ethics and Economics," said she believes lying is generally wrong, but an employer isn't entitled to know whether someone is working multiple jobs unless it's explicitly prohibited in an employment contract.

"As long as the salaried employee is working hard enough not to get fired, the employee has done everything they owe to their employer and is not obligated to reveal that they are moonlighting for someone else," she said.

Additionally, she doesn't think it would be unethical for an employee to evade a question about their work status or offer "truthful but misleading" information.

In the case of contract workers, who are often hired temporarily for a specific purpose, Anderson said job juggling is ethically acceptable unless it is explicitly prohibited in a formal contract.

"Their employer has no loyalty to them — else they'd be permanent — so no loyalty is owed back," she said.

The possibility of conflicts of interest

Overemployment could open the door to other ethical trouble, along with questions about loyalty.

Chris MacDonald, an associate professor at Toronto Metropolitan University who also consults on ethics, said it could create a conflict of interest if a person juggles multiple jobs and the employers are in the same field, presenting a different set of ethical concerns.

Meanwhile, Anderson said it would be wrong to work for a second employer from the first employer's office, rather than from a separate workspace, she added. And if an employee is paid by the hour, they should only bill for the time actually spent working for that employer.

While some job jugglers might think it's fine to have multiple jobs if the work gets done, MacDonald said it's probably wrong unless they've asked their employers first. Additionally, he said there could be times when performing well at two or more jobs isn't realistic.

"When two bosses both give you urgent deadlines on a Friday afternoon, who will you be loyal to?" he said. "You're likely going to have to lie to one of them, and probably fail in your responsibilities to them as well."

However, not every overemployed person will agree. In fact, Haugh said job jugglers likely have little trouble coming up with their own justifications for their working arrangements.

"Individuals are very good at viewing their own behavior as ethical," he said. "They come up with lots of good stories about why it's OK to do a thing, when really, if you step back objectively and look at it, oftentimes it's a lot harder to defend."

Do you have a story to share about secretly working multiple jobs or discovering an employee is doing so? Contact this reporter via email at jzinkula@businessinsider.com or Signal at jzinkula.29.