In counseling, ethics involves the code that those in the counseling profession must follow, as well as the personal and professional ethical beliefs of each person who works as a counselor, which may go above and beyond that code. Ethical codes required by counselors are the minimum standards for ethical behavior. These include things like not giving out patient information to unauthorized parties, not dating patients, etc. Many counselors have even higher standards that they have set on their own, and they follow those along with the basic ethical standards.
