Ethical standards and professional conduct
What the Board actually enforces
Indiana does not reduce ethics to a single adopted code. The Board enforces the grounds in IC 25-1-9-4 (incompetence, negligence, misconduct, fraud, practicing beyond scope) and the standards of practice in 839 IAC, and it expects a licensee to follow the ethics code of the professional body they hold themselves out to belong to. That means the familiar duties count as Board issues, not just association issues: informed consent, competence, multiple relationships, sexual misconduct, confidentiality, fees, advertising, termination and referral, and record keeping.
High-risk categories
- Boundaries: bartering, gifts, home-based services, social-media contact, treating friends or family.
- Role conflict: serving as both treating therapist and forensic evaluator, the classic custody-case violation.
- Scope creep: diagnosing or treating conditions outside training instead of referring.
- Records: clinical records must be created, retained and produced when the Board subpoenas them.
Worked example
A therapist has treated a family for a year when the court asks for a custody recommendation. Accepting the evaluation role converts treatment into a forensic opinion in which the therapist is no longer neutral and the family's disclosures were obtained under a treatment frame. The ethical response is to decline the evaluation, explain the role conflict, and offer a treatment summary or a referral to an evaluator with no prior relationship.
Traps that cost marks
- Believing a signed consent form legalizes a dual relationship; consent does not cure exploitation.
- Believing a small community or insurance panel excuses boundary problems.
- Treating sexual contact with a client as a boundary question; it is a violation with no consent defense.
- Assuming Good Samaritan or informal advice situations never raise competence questions.