Is out of town formulating ethics (6)
I believe the answer is:
ideals
'ethics' is the definition.
(I've seen this before)
'is out of town' is the wordplay.
'out' means to remove the last letter.
'of town' becomes 'deals' (I can't justify this - if you can you should believe this answer much more).
'is' with its last letter removed is 'i'.
'i'+'deals'='IDEALS'
'formulating' acts as a link.
I am not very happy about this link. It may be part of another bit of the clue.
Can you help me to learn more?
(Other definitions for ideals that I've seen before include "Bad ladies have high principles" , "Models of excellance" , "Morals" , "Highest standards, model objectives" , "They're perfect" .)