I would argue that we seem to use a mixture of outcome and intention when judging people’s actions anyway; if I am upset and you jokingly throw a juggling ball at me, I am liable to become angry because of the outcome, despite the intention; but if I am in high spirits, and you do the same, I am more likely to laugh and throw it back—thus ignoring the outcome in favour of the intention.

Riffing on what you said in your last paragraph (“we make choices about what to (try and) do now based on what we are aiming for in the future”), if a government policy intended to reduce childhood poverty has instead raised it, then the intention is worthless; it is the facts of the matter we must contend with. It clearly wasn’t the right policy to take in pursuit of its aims. Though I understand this wanders a little bit from the area of ethics, it is still relevant.

The legal system also uses a mixture of intent and outcome; if you accidentally crash a car and kill someone, you still do time for it, since it is widely judged that outcome was bad enough for that. If you possess certain drugs, you get one fine, or if you possess “with intent to deal”, you get another.

Any ethical musings that start by setting down what the basis for morality should be, rather than paying attention to how people use it, are going to fall foul of taking extreme and one-sided views of human nature.