Ethical and Professional Issues
The foundation
The ethics code is organized around core principles: beneficence, nonmaleficence, autonomy, justice, fidelity, and veracity, along with dignity, equity, and accountability. Learn them as principles rather than rules to memorize - many questions present a conflict and ask which principle is implicated.
Recurring obligations
- Informed consent from the client or a legally authorized representative, in understandable language, covering procedures, risks, benefits, alternatives, and the right to withdraw. Consent is ongoing, not a signature at intake; seek and document assent from minors.
- Confidentiality with defined limits: danger to self or others, suspected abuse or neglect (mandated reporting), court orders, and coordinated care with minimum necessary disclosure.
- Competence: practice within your training; obtain supervision or refer.
- Multiple relationships: avoid those that could exploit or impair judgment; romantic or sexual relationships with clients and supervisees are prohibited.
- Least restrictive, most effective procedures; risk–benefit analysis; reinforcement before punishment, and punishment only with oversight and data.
Traps
- Cases where the parent or funder is called the client but the rights holder is the learner.
- A colleague practicing unethically - the code expects informal resolution first, then escalation, not silence.
- Sympathetically framed confidentiality breaches ("the mother asked and she pays the bill").
- Gifts and bartering, permitted only under narrow conditions with documentation.
Rule of thumb
When a stem is ethically ambiguous, ask: Who is the client? What is the least-restrictive, evidence-based, consent-based option? What could I defend in a records review? Choose the answer that preserves dignity and documents the decision process.