Lesson 2: Ethics and Multicultural Competence


Attention

Ethics embody a set of standards by which we may decisions. These guidelines often read like "laws" and even some of them have control systems (such as fines and punishments) when you do not comply with them, but they are designed to help guide your thinking about your practice. This thought process is what we are going to develop in this Lesson.


Learning Outcomes

Upon completion of this lesson's material, students will be able to:

  • Identify standards of ethical practice
  • Understand the use of ethics in professional practice

Teaching

American Counseling Association Code of Ethics

Many professional organizations construct of document that outlines the Professional Code of Ethics associated with that field. At the time of this writing, the State of Maine is putting together a Code of Ethics for Case Management and other Mental Health Community providers so soon we will have one of our own.

In the meantime, we are going to borrow one from the American Counseling Association. Click HERE to download the 2014 ACA Code of Ethics.

Using the Code to Guide your Practice

Most of the time we rely on our "gut instinct" to tell us if we are doing the "right" thing or not, but you will soon realize that this is not always a reliable source of information for decision making. Our gut is valuable, but it is also prone to patters of behavior (good and bad) and to perceptions shaped by our biases (culture, attraction, history, etc.)

Using the Code is sort of like using any set of guidelines to guide our behavior. Sometime they are very specific while at other times the unique qualities of the situation we find ourselves in are not clearly described in the Guide, so we need to interpret the Guidelines in order to make our decision.

The ACA Code of Ethics is organized into the following sections:

  • Section A - The Counseling Relationship
  • Section B - Confidentiality and Privacy
  • Section C - Professional Responsibility
  • Section D - Relationships with Other Professionals
  • Section E - Evaluation, Assessment, and Interpretation
  • Section F - Supervision, Training, and Teaching
  • Section G - Research and Publication
  • Section H - Distance, Counseling, Technology, and Social Media
  • Section I - Resolving Ethical Issues

As you can see, the Code is fairly comprehensive. Because of the way it is organized (into small sub-sections of different ethical guidelines) it is actually a fairly easy read. Take some time to review the entire document and identify guidelines that you think are relevant to the career path your are going into.


Assessment

No Assessments in this Lesson

The Learning Outcomes for this Lesson are addressed in the Ethical Reasoning Special Assignment.