Why is Musar--learning the works of Ethics of Torah important? One reason is that often the very people that make their living by means of Torah can be the enemies of Torah.
The religious clothing and the whole song and dance about keeping Torah, can hide the agenda of getting naïve secular Jews to be slaves and servants and support of the patrician [morally-superior] class of the religious, [...that we secular Jews are just too stupid to understand or perceive. If only we would understand the moral and intellectual superiority of the religious we would just throw all our money at them and agree and acquiesce to subsistent on the bare minimum.]
That kind of thing can make it hard for simple people to learn Torah, and can take away the very desire to learn and keep Torah,-- i.e. by seeing the way the religious world is and acts towards baali teshuva [newly religious]. [And that is often atrocious.]
What does one do? I tend to say that Torah is important, and not responsible for those that misuse it. [The Romans even had a saying for this kind of thing, "Abuse does not cancel use." "Abusus non tollit usum."]
But that is not a really satisfying answer to this problem, since you assume that just learning and keeping Torah in itself ought to bring people to a higher moral level in which they would not be acting in such ways that clearly lack simple human decency. [Otherwise why learn it in teh first place?]
So it must be that there is something about the very way that they go about it is lacking some essential aspect. [Or that the religious are not in fact keeping Torah at all. Just the very opposite.]
This really great problem was addressed by Rav Israel Salanter in his efforts to bring the learning of Musar to people.
While on one hand, this is a good answer for the problem--but not really all that powerful a cure. Mashgikim [spiritual directors of yeshivot] are often just failed roshei yeshiva that could not make the top grade, and so were appointed to be the spiritual directors.
And the further problem is that many people have found this kind of problem and their lives are destroyed, and yet have no shoulder to cry on since they are blamed themselves for what really lies at the feet of the religious world.
From where does this disconnect come from? It seems to me that part of the reason is that a kind of force of evil got mixed up into the religious world. Something that the Gra tried to warn us about, but was not heeded. And that is found even in Litvak yeshivot.
What is the big deal you might ask? Because of something the sages of the Talmud said: :"The evil inclination abandons its attempts to seduce the while world and rest only on Israel. And then it abandons its efforts on Israel and takes itself to the Torah scholars." (That is to say that the very essence of the Dark Side is disguised in those that supposedly keep Torah).
[I am not saying that I am perfect in this regard. Rather that as well as I can keep the straight Torah path of the Gra all the better. And that I can wish that others might do the same and also pay more attention to the fact that he signed the letter of excommunication and repeated that fact several times afterwards, Showing that although we can not see this right off hand at first, still there is a terrible danger that we may not see.]
