This goes to the definition of "ethical", and it's distinct from "moral", in the sense that ethics are a codified set of rules or guidelines: one does not judge something as ethical based on the result, but based on its conformity to a set of explicit or implicit expectations of conduct.
Ethics can be personal though, and there are many different forms, many of which explicitly focus on the result, and many which do not. I still think that it is very difficult to separate the concept of ethics from the notion of harm. Even where codified, the concept of avoiding harm, if only to members of your own clade for the more tribal forms, is pretty central to the formulation of pretty much all ethical systems.