ETHICAL CONSIDERATIONS IN COUNSELING
ETHICAL CONSIDERATIONS IN COUNSELING
Counselors, like all professionals, have ethical responsibilities and obligations. The counseling literature contains numerous references to ethics and the legal status of the counselor, but for a number of reasons ethical problems pose particularly difficult situations for people in the various helping professions. First, clear-cut, specific ethical codes that provide adequate guidelines for ethical behavior in the very wide range of situations encountered in counseling relationships have yet to be evolved. Second, most counseling professionals work within the context of institutions such as schools, colleges, hospitals, churches, and private agencies whose institutional value systems may be quite different from those of the counseling profession itself. Finally, counselors are particularly likely to encounter situations where their ethical obligations overlap or conflict. Often a counselor is working simultaneously with several people who are involved in their own close interpersonal relationships, whether in the family, the school, or other institutions. In such situations, ethical obligations become exceedingly complex.
The principal rule supporting ethical obligations is that the counselor must act with full recognition of the importance of client rights, the ethics of the profession, and the relationship of moral standards and values, individual or cultural, in the life of that client.
The Nature of Ethical Obligations
Ethics are suggested standards of conduct based on a consensus value set. When an aspiring professional group undertakes an activity that involves a considerable element of public trust and confidence, it must translate prevailing values into a set of ethical standards that can serve to structure expectations for the behavior of its members in their relationships with the public and with each other. As the group emerges in its development toward professionalization, ethical standards are generally
Counselors, like all professionals, have ethical responsibilities and obligations. The counseling literature contains numerous references to ethics and the legal status of the counselor, but for a number of reasons ethical problems pose particularly difficult situations for people in the various helping professions. First, clear-cut, specific ethical codes that provide adequate guidelines for ethical behavior in the very wide range of situations encountered in counseling relationships have yet to be evolved. Second, most counseling professionals work within the context of institutions such as schools, colleges, hospitals, churches, and private agencies whose institutional value systems may be quite different from those of the counseling profession itself. Finally, counselors are particularly likely to encounter situations where their ethical obligations overlap or conflict. Often a counselor is working simultaneously with several people who are involved in their own close interpersonal relationships, whether in the family, the school, or other institutions. In such situations, ethical obligations become exceedingly complex.
The principal rule supporting ethical obligations is that the counselor must act with full recognition of the importance of client rights, the ethics of the profession, and the relationship of moral standards and values, individual or cultural, in the life of that client.
The Nature of Ethical Obligations
Ethics are suggested standards of conduct based on a consensus value set. When an aspiring professional group undertakes an activity that involves a considerable element of public trust and confidence, it must translate prevailing values into a set of ethical standards that can serve to structure expectations for the behavior of its members in their relationships with the public and with each other. As the group emerges in its development toward professionalization, ethical standards are generally