As a member of a professional organisation, a counsellor will meet minimum standards. As an example, this ethical framework is based on that by the British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy (BACP):
Commitment to clients
- Putting clients first
- Working to professional standards
- Showing respect
- Building an appropriate relationship with clients
- Maintaining integrity
- Demonstrating accountability and candour
Ethical values
Values
- respecting human rights and dignity
- alleviating symptoms of personal distress and suffering
- enhancing people’s wellbeing and capabilities
- improving the quality of relationships between people
- increasing personal resilience and effectiveness
- facilitating a sense of self that is meaningful to the person(s) concerned within their personal and cultural context
- appreciating the variety of human experience and culture
- protecting the safety of clients
- ensuring the integrity of practitioner-client relationships
- enhancing the quality of professional knowledge and its application
- striving for the fair and adequate provision of services
Ethical principals
- Being trustworthy: honouring the trust placed in the practitioner
- Autonomy: respect for the client’s right to be self-governing
- Beneficence: a commitment to promoting the client’s wellbeing
- Non-maleficence: a commitment to avoiding harm to the client
- Justice: the fair and impartial treatment of all clients and the provision of adequate services
- Self-respect: fostering the practitioner’s self-knowledge, integrity and care for self
Ethical Moral Qualities
- Candour: openness with clients about anything that places them at risk of harm or causes actual
harm - Care: benevolent, responsible and competent attentiveness to someone’s needs, wellbeing
and personal agency - Courage: the capacity to act in spite of known fears, risks and uncertainty
- Diligence: the conscientious deployment of the skills and knowledge needed to achieve a
beneficial outcome - Empathy: the ability to communicate understanding of another person’s experience from that
person’s perspective - Fairness: impartial and principled in decisions and actions concerning others in ways that promote equality of opportunity and maximise the capability of the people concerned
- Humility: the ability to assess accurately and acknowledge one’s own strengths and weaknesses
- Identity: sense of self in relationship to others that forms the basis of responsibility, resilience and motivation
- Integrity: commitment to being moral in dealings with others, including personal straightforwardness, honesty and coherence
- Resilience: the capacity to work with the client’s concerns without being personally diminished
- Respect: showing appropriate esteem for people and their understanding of themselves
- Sincerity: a personal commitment to consistency between what is professed and what is done
- Wisdom: possession of sound judgement that informs practice
Good practice
- Putting clients first
- Working to professional standards
- Respect
- Building an appropriate relationship
- Integrity
- Accountability and candour
- Confidentiality
- Supervision
- Training and education
- Care of self as a practitioner
- Responding to ethical dilemmas and issues
For more information see:
“Ethical Framework for the Counselling Professions“
@BACP (adopted 1 July 2018)
