Professional ethics is a complex domain for students, teachers, and practitioners. The term ethics and legal itself carries so many different meanings that important opportunities for valuable inquiry may be missed by individuals who are attempting to clarify these meanings.
When counselors refer to ethics, it is often not clear whether they are referring to codes of ethics, moral values, legal limitations on behavior, community standards, or to some general sense of the term that is meant to encompass any one or all of these concepts. In addition, ethics may be discussed in either ideal language, referring to the highest and best goals a counselor may aspire to, or in practical language, reflecting mandatory minimal standards in professional life.
Some researchers define ethics as ethical behavior, that is, rules for appropriate conduct adopted by an individual or group. Others define ethics by incorporating conduct into practitioner psychological processes. Ethical behavior must meet four criteria: (a) The counselor must have sufficient knowledge, skill, and judgment to use efficacious interventions; (b) the counselor must respect the human dignity and freedom of the client; (c) the counselor must responsibly use the power inherent in his or her role; and (d) the counselor must act in ways that promote public confidence in the counseling. Similarly, all defined ethics (which Rest equated with moral behavior) both behaviorally and attitudinally. They all described four psychological criteria; if the criteria are met, then the result is moral behavior. The criteria are (a) moral sensitivity (interpreting the situation), (b) moral judgment (judging which action is morally right or wrong), (c) moral motivation (prioritizing moral values relative to other values), and (d) moral character (Cohen, E. D., & Cohen, G. S. 1999).
Over the past several decades, professionals in the field of counseling have become increasingly engaged in advocacy.......
