Ethical Issues in Consultation, Associate Professor and Director

Abstract

Consulting relationships differ from traditional counseling and psychotherapeutic relationships in several fundamental ways. These differences require special consideration in evaluating ethical questions and conflicts, identifying ethical parameters within any given situation, and using existing ethical guidelines in determining appropriate courses of action. Currently, formal guidelines specific to the practice of consultation are not available, and existing codes of ethics for the helping professions provide only limited guidance for consultation practice. Consequently, consultants bear a heavy personal responsibility for the consequences of their professional decisions and actions. In this article the author reviews several important ethical issues relevant to consultation and examines their implications for consultation practice.

Counseling psychologists as consultants.

“…Kralj (2001) pointed out that even when intervention is focused at the executive level, individual-, team-, and organization-level interventions are usually blended into a more holistic strategy. The importance of the level of intervention has long been recognized as a powerful determinant of the configuration of consulting relationships and, in turn, the nature of ethical responsibilities (Newman, 1993;Snow & Gersick, 1986). The structured, hierarchical nature of organizations can have a dramatic effect on the variable consequences of planned change.…”