Here is the dilemma: You are asked to do something as part of a group but some members of the group corrupt the mission. If you go along with the group, it could be perceived that you agree with them so you don’t want to participate. Conversely, if you call it quits, then you are definitely not doing the requested job. Should you go along, knowing – in your heart - that you are doing the right thing, or should you not go along, since it could be perceived that you are doing the wrong thing?
We could pose the question another way: what is more important, the action or the intention? If all you had to do was get the “action” done: Then even though the action is performed by others, albeit in a corrupt way, and you don’t have anything to do with it (since its “intention” is corrupted), you are staying far away. However, if it is all about the “intention:” then is it possible for you to “think” good intentions, even while the wrong “action” is being perpetrated?
This was exactly the dilemma of Joshua and Calev when they went as spies to investigate the Land of Israel. Moses had asked them to “bring back fruit from the promised land.” Yet, when they saw that other spies where planning to come back and misuse the fruit (as a prop) to enter Israel, they didn’t want to have anything to do with that plan. However, if Moses asked them to bring back the fruit, shouldn’t they have listened? This was their dilemma. Should they have listened or not? We know that they didn’t bring anything back. But why?
In general, it is the action that counts so long as we have good intentions. However, in this specific case, when the spies’ emphasis was on teaching the Jews that we can serve G-d by thought and speech and putting less emphasis on action, Joshua and Calev wanted to emphasize the importance of action--to the point that it is all about the action, going so far as to defy Moses’s request to bring back the fruit, simply to teach the Jewish people the lesson that serving G-d comes from our actions.
Yes, we need good intentions, but good intentions, without anchoring them in good actions, is not going to work.