Issues and Ethics in Helping Professions, Essay Example

Introduction

That counseling is associated with and pressured by numerous ethical issues is a well-known fact. Diversity, multiculturalism, group work, family and marital issues – all these create a diverse range of ethical issues, which professional counselors are bound to meet. Needless to say, that a professional counselor is expected to possess the basic knowledge of ethical codes and requirements, but the scope of counselor’s ethical obligations is not limited to what is written in textbooks. Rather, one of the pressing ethical issues for the Counselor, as well as one of the major professional challenges, is in being able to develop a new, aspirational vision of ethics, which goes beyond mandatory standards and implies the need for a counselor to develop and sustain a spirit and ethical intuition, without which counseling as a profession and as a calling becomes irrelevant.

A wealth of literature has been written about the most controversial ethical issues in counseling and related helping professions. Authors and scholars in helping professions seek to develop a clear and unilateral vision of what ethics is, what the most pressuring ethical issues are, and how a counselor should deal with them. However, the problem of ethics is in its flexibility, unpredictability, and changeability. In other words, there is never a single and unilaterally objective decision to ethical issues that emerge in the process of counseling. Regardless of whether one speaks about diversity, multiculturalism, or group work, it is always about some kind of ethical intuition and spirit, which a good counselor should possess to choose the most correct and the most relevant ethical path. For these reasons, I believe that not ethical issues in their traditional form, but the need for aspirational ethics in general is one of the pressuring issues in present day counseling.

It is difficult not to agree to Corey, Corey and Callanan in that “ethics represents aspirational goals, or the maximum or ideal standards set by the profession, and they are enforced by professional associations, national certification boards, and government boards that regulate professions” (12). The major counselor’s problem, however, is in trying to balance these conventional nonflexible standards with the flexible process of helping clients. Although textbooks and codes of conduct present the most detailed and the most comprehensive vision of helping ethics, they lose their significance as soon as the counselor faces something new; something that was not described in textbooks; something that requires immediate resolution and, simultaneously, goes beyond the boundaries of conventional ethical thinking. Aspirational ethics and the need for a new ethical intuition in counseling can be fairly regarded as one of the pressuring ethical issues in counseling, because it covers all major elements of the counseling profession and is associated with the most controversial ethical issues.

No matter how detailed and comprehensive the authors are in their description and evaluation of ethical issues, they still recognize their guidelines as the basis for developing individual principles and criteria of ethics for professional practice. Aspirational ethics is about self-examination, questioning, and self-doubts. It is about being professionally responsible for every single decision, no matter whether it is about diversity of community counseling. The essential characteristic of ethics in counseling is in that ethical codes and textbooks do not provide final answers to any ethical situation, and thus leave much room for reinterpretation and analysis. Aspirational ethics thus becomes the most challenging task a counselor faces in his (her) practice. It is one of the most pressuring aspects of ethical performance, because it goes beyond codes and requirements. It is critically important, because it is implies the counselor’s ability to reevaluate and develop sound ethical values and to use these for the benefit of the client. It is critically important because without it, counseling profession loses its sense and is no longer helping.

Conclusion

Counseling is associated with numerous ethical issues. Diversity, marital relations, group work, and community work – all these pose significant ethical challenges. However, when it comes to the most pressuring ethical issues in counseling, the need for develop an aspirational ethical vision becomes a matter of primary importance. Because aspirational ethics requires that counselors go beyond the boundaries of ethical codes and develop their own, flexible ethical intuition, and because aspirational ethics covers all issues and fields of practice without any exception, it is one of the most pressuring issues in helping professions. Aspirational ethics is not about codes and requirements; it is about questioning and self-doubt. Given that textbooks and codes of conduct do not provide final answers to all ethical issues, without aspirational ethical intuition counseling loses its sense and is no longer helping.

Works Cited

Corey, G., Corey, M.S. & Callanan, P. Issues and Ethics in the Helping Professions. Thomson, 2007.