Ethical Consultation

Consultants, like counselors, often face ethical dilemmas. While well-crafted informed consent paperwork helps to mitigate some potential ethical dilemmas, no consultant can anticipate every ethical scenario. Because professional norms and values develop across time, it is important that counselors, including those acting as consultants, engage in ongoing ethics training (Neukrug & Milliken, 2011).

Counselor Ethical Codes & Consultation

Review the Ethics Codes unit located in the Introduction to Counseling class.

Ethical Decision Making Models

Review the unit in the Introduction to Counseling class on ethical decision making models.

Ethical Decision Making Exploration Questions

• How much did you relate to this ethical decision making model?
• Do you see yourself using this model?
• If you don't see yourself using this model, what other models might be more useful?
• How can you locate other ethical decision making models?

Hypothetical Ethical Scenarios

Ethics can seem fairly straightforward (black & white) on paper. However, in practice ethical situations are often complex, nuanced, and difficult to navigate. Counselors, consultants, and collaborators may even find themselves stuck between two different ethical codes. The following ethical scenarios are written so that counselors can begin to look beyond ethics as either right or wrong. When reading through these scenarios, consider how you will apply your preferred ethical decision making model.

• The first ethical scenario can be downloaded here.
• The second ethical scenario can be downloaded here.
• The third ethical scenario can be downloaded here.

After reading through the above scenarios, select and apply an ethical decision making model to determine what course of action you will take.