Counselling Ethics Essay

1676 Words7 Pages
ETHICS ESSAY “When dealing with counselling ethical dilemmas, as a professional I am required to ignore my personal values, obey the law at all costs and adhere to one specific theoretical ethical approach.” I do not agree with the above statement as this could stereotype all human service workers to be programmed clones. Evidence will be provided to support this claim. Also, this essay will be a personal reflection of challenges that I expect to face as a beginning professional when confronted with ethical dilemmas in the counselling field. Furthermore, examples of ethical theories, moral principles, Australian Counselling Association’s Code of Ethics and other related information that I would draw on will be provided. Finally, explanations will be given why my values would be adding or hindering in any way to my ethical counselling practice? Firstly, I would not adhere to one specific theoretical ethical approach. I would use an eclectic theoretical ethical approach because clients have a diversity of issues that need to be treated individually with numerous ethical approaches. One theory does not fit all. According to Minor & Petocz (2003, p.82) recent ethical decision making models advocate plurality of perspectives however, real life experiences and complex practice problems brings the realisation that good ethical decision making needs to encompass many perspectives. Secondly, why I would not ignore my personal values is because it’s important to recognise personal values that could impact on a client such as transference, discrimination etc. Also, I need to see where I stand from my personal ethical point of view using a critical perspective to make ethical decisions that are balanced and not biased. Subsequently, I need to have an awareness of my values adding or hindering the counselling process. An example of this is I am pro-life and if a client
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