Code of Ethics - Assessment After Reading

Code of Ethics - Assessment

After reading thoroughly through the American Counseling Association Code of Ethics document, there was one aspect that I found really surprising. The overall structure of the document was very naive or somewhat ordinary. It had separated heading and each heading had at least 4-5 lines of description. I found this particular structure to be a very immature approach to presenting facts on Counseling Ethics and their assessment techniques.

Not only did I find it immature, I also felt it was incoherent and difficult to go through as it felt abrupt and disconnected when reading due to the heading and all the divisions. It felt like it was of a handout that would allow students to memorize the headings and then relate them later on in a test or a paper as opposed to a guideline for counselors who were looking for an official guidance for ethical conduct during and after assessment.

Another aspect that I found surprising was the level of detail provided. It was very to-the-point and precise whereas for most ethical conduct instructions, the overall approach for explanation of ethical conducts is one that requires a lot of detail and numerous case scenarios whereby the reader could take the examples and learn from them before applying them in their own lives and practice. On the other hand, the topics covered in the paper were all-inclusive, it seems, as a variety of the important topics were covered but the overall detail and description, I felt was not up to par.

One of the biggest reasons why I felt that the information felt incomplete was because there were no real life cases quoted and no situational examples given for further explanation. Usually, when trying to understand ethical conduct in counseling, real life examples and situations are given in order to further explain the possible applications of the code of conduct and the different ways that it can be interpreted in different situations. However, this particular aspect was not covered at all in the entire handout, and it left a certain type of void in my mind as I was reading through it because it felt like some things were being repeated throughout the document but I could not related how those same aspects were different or could be applied differently under the different headings provided.

For example, content under the headings E.1.a -- assessment and E.2.c -- decisions based on results, seemed to be saying the same thing about the abilities of the counselors but how the decision making process and assessment process was different from one another was not explained. Yes, there is a common thread between the two aspects, i.e. The counselor is in sole control of the end results presented, however the focus, in my opinion in the latter heading (E.2.c) should have been on the methods of applying the decision making process as opposed to just highlighting the abilities of the counselor that were necessary to make that decision. Similarly, in the former heading (E.1.a), I feel there should have been a focus on examples of how one aspect was assessed differently by various counselors in the past based on different situations. This particular aspect was a common missing thread in the entire document and thus there appeared to be very little distinction made across different headings, while in real life, the application of those headings were technically very different.

One of the strengths however of the document was that it covered a wide variety of ethical areas that should be covered and that the counselors should be aware of at all times. While, my argument before was that there was not enough detail provided, it is important to note here that there seemed to be enough information in each heading for the reader or counselor to remember and recall on their fingertips. Hence in that particular context, it did feel like it was a handout for the counselors to have a quick recap of main points for standardized ethical conducts in different situations.

Yet another strength of the document, in my opinion, was the use of easy, simple and comprehensible language. The entire document was in written in a way that was easy to go through in terms of the language used for each heading, I did not feel the need to go over or read a sentence more than once because the overall sentence formation and use of words was simplistic and any lay person could also understand what had been said.

Finally, I also felt that the headings, which were mainly comprehensive of the text under them, were simplistically structured and thus were easy to memorize and recall. This is a very important aspect of the document, in my opinion, as I feel that the document was structured like a handout primarily so that it was easy to memorize and it fulfilled that primary purpose by having such easily structured headings and sub-headings.