Professional Orientation and Ethics 2
Identity, organizations, decision-making models, and money matters
Lesson 1 gave you the landmarks. This lesson fills in the professional identity timeline the exams draw from.
- 1913: after Parsons, the National Vocational Guidance Association formed, becoming the profession's first organizational home
- 1952: several guidance groups merged into the American Personnel and Guidance Association
- 1983: renamed the American Association for Counseling and Development
- 1992: finally renamed the American Counseling Association
- 1976: Virginia passed the first counselor licensure law
- 2009: California became the last state to license counselors, completing the licensure era
Organizations and their jobs
ACA is the umbrella professional association, and its divisions serve specialties, though AMHCA and ASCA have operated independently of ACA.
- ACES for counselor educators and supervisors
- NCDA for career counselors
- AMHCA historically for mental health counselors
- ASCA for school counselors
Chi Sigma Iota is the international honor society for counseling students and professionals. Knowing which body does what is heavily tested: associations advocate and publish ethics codes, boards regulate, and accreditors review programs.
State licensing boards regulate individual practitioners and can discipline a license. NBCC certifies individuals nationally and administers the NCE and NCMHCE. CACREP accredits graduate programs. A vignette about a complaint against a counselor's license points to the state board, never to NBCC or CACREP.
Ethical decision-making models
Kitchener's five moral principles anchor most decision-making models:
- Autonomy: client self-determination
- Nonmaleficence: do no harm, often called the most fundamental
- Beneficence: do good
- Justice: fairness and equal treatment
- Fidelity: keep promises and be loyal
Some writers add veracity, truthfulness, as a sixth. Documentation of each step and consultation along the way are what make a decision defensible later. Formal models such as the Forester-Miller and Davis guide follow a common sequence:
- Identify the problem
- Apply the code
- Determine the dimensions of the dilemma using the moral principles
- Generate courses of action
- Weigh consequences and select one
- Evaluate it
- Implement
Values conflicts and referral limits
The 2014 ACA Code drew a firm line on values-based referrals after cases like Ward v. Wilbanks, in which a trainee was dismissed for refusing to counsel a gay client on relationship issues and the courts ultimately allowed the program's enforcement of professional standards to stand.
Counselors may refer for lack of competence with a clinical issue, but not simply because the client's identity or choices conflict with the counselor's personal values.
The expected remedy for a values clash is counselor self-monitoring, supervision, and training, not handing the client off.
A distractor will often say the ethical move is to refer the client to a counselor whose values match. On current standards that is the wrong answer when the conflict is purely about the counselor's personal values. Referral is justified by skill and competence gaps, not by discomfort with who the client is.
Fees, bartering, and gifts
Fee ethics require that charges be set with informed consent up front, that fee changes be discussed in advance, and that counselors weigh clients' financial status and locality norms, offering referral to comparable affordable services when a client cannot pay. Fee splitting, paying or receiving kickbacks purely for referrals, is unethical.
Bartering is not banned outright; it may be acceptable when:
- The client requests it
- It is not exploitative or clinically contraindicated
- It is an accepted practice in the community
- The arrangement is put in a clear written contract
Small gifts are handled the same way, weighing monetary value, each party's motivation, the cultural meaning of gift giving, and the stage of the relationship. Refusing a modest culturally meaningful gift can rupture the alliance; accepting an expensive one can exploit it.
Nonmaleficence is the go-to answer when a question asks for the most basic ethical obligation. For bartering and gifts, the credited responses are conditional: look for options that say it depends on exploitation risk, cultural norms, client request, and a written agreement, not options that say always or never.