Americans are asking what has happened to the values that society once held in high esteem. The country is bemoaning the lack of morals and values held by individuals and professionals. Television and the news carry stories of violence and sex. Students are more willing to cheat. The ethical ethos that has guided America has been damaged; professionals have been the most culpable (Hauptman & Hill, 1991, p.43). The nature of a profession itself implies a higher level of ethical standards. Professions arise from a public trust. The public trust includes three primary beliefs held about professions. The public holds the perception that professionals are competent. They have a special knowledge. The second belief is that groups of professionals will maintain a set of standards and regulate themselves according to those standards. The last set of beliefs that the public holds in regard to professions is that the professions are motivated by values of altruism (Biggs & Blocher, 1987, p.p. 3-4). The counseling professions have been included in the indictment of ethical standards, along with the other professions. The evidence does not suggest that all professions are equally guilty. The counseling professions seem to be doing a better job maintaining their ethical standards as a group than some of the other professions, although individuals do sometimes encounter difficulty living up to the American Psychiatric Association's code of ethics.
The purpose of this paper is to examine the ethical standards of the counseling professions as given by the APA's ethical principles and their code of conduct, and to compare the standards to problems encountered by working counselors. Do the standards help the individual professional conform his behavior to the ethical behavior that the public expects from a professional? The ethical code was rewritten in 1992. It appears to need to be made more exhaustive and to more clearly define t...