Addressing ethical issues: counseling case study guide
Two counselling case studies where the ethical problem sits with the counsellor rather than the clients — one a competence gap, one a values conflict — and where the obvious referral answer is the one the code was revised to prevent.
Editorial process
Last reviewed · August 8, 2026
Whose ethical problem is it in these two case studies?
Both case studies are built around the same hidden move, and spotting it is what the assignment is testing. In each, the ethical problem is not located in the clients — it is located in **you**. Case one ends with the counsellor having *little knowledge of Indian culture or the caste system* and being unsure how to read the conflict; case two ends with the couple's relationship practice conflicting with *your own personal opinion about the role of monogamy*. Neither family has done anything requiring ethical adjudication. A paper that analyses whether the Pathaks are being unreasonable, or whether non-monogamy is workable, has answered a question about the clients when the brief asked about the counsellor. Say so in your first paragraph, because a marker reading the opening lines can tell immediately whether you located the problem correctly.
Name the two counsellor-side problems precisely, because they are different and the codes treat them differently. Case one is a **competence** problem: you lack cultural knowledge material to the presenting issue, which bears on boundaries of competence, the duty to seek consultation, supervision and training, and the requirement to understand clients within their cultural context rather than assessing them against your own. Case two is a **values imposition** problem: your personal view conflicts with the clients' relationship structure, which engages the standard on avoiding the imposition of personal values and, critically, the rules governing referral. Those are not interchangeable analyses. Getting this diagnosis right also determines which standards you will end up citing, so it is worth settling before you open the code at all.
The referral point in case two deserves particular care, because the intuitive answer is the wrong one. The 2014 revision of the ACA Code tightened exactly this: referrals must rest on **competence**, not on personal values, after it became clear that competence claims were functioning as cover for value-based refusal of service. So 'I would refer them to someone who shares their views' is not the safe answer it appears to be — it is close to the practice the revision was written to stop. The defensible route is to recognise the conflict, seek supervision, examine whether your discomfort is actually impairing your work, and address your own bias rather than transferring the clients. If you would still consider referral, say what would have to be true for it to be competence-based rather than values-based.
Case one has a distinct trap of its own. The counsellor's uncertainty is framed as a binary — is this *controlling parents dealing with a life transition* or *a serious conflict involving social and cultural influences*? Resist choosing. Family life-cycle transitions and cultural expectation are not alternatives; a family can be navigating an ordinary developmental conflict *through* a culturally specific framework, and treating the two as mutually exclusive is itself the cultural error. The ethically sound move is not to decide the question from outside but to acquire the competence to understand how the family themselves frame it, which is also what the codes require you to do. Framing it that way also gives you something concrete to propose, which a refusal to choose otherwise lacks.
Two structural points on the deliverable. The brief has three bullets and only two to three pages, so the analysis has to be compressed: identify the case and its ethical issues, explain how you would address each, and justify with specific code citations. That third bullet means **cited standards**, by section number where you can — a paper that gestures at 'the ACA code' without a single standard has not justified anything. Choose one code, ACA or IAMFC, and use it consistently rather than sampling both. And note the brief defines culture broadly, as the behaviours, traditions or beliefs of any subgroup, which is what makes a relationship structure a cultural consideration in case two. Quoting a short phrase from each standard you cite, with its number, is the cheapest way to make the justification checkable.
Element | Where the ethical issue sits | The paper that fails |
|---|---|---|
Case 1 — the Pathak family | Counsellor's lack of cultural knowledge | Judging whether the parents are controlling |
Case 1 — the framing | A false binary the counsellor should refuse | Choosing one side of the binary |
Case 2 — Nicole and Julia | Counsellor's personal values conflict | Assessing whether non-monogamy is viable |
Case 2 — the referral instinct | Referral must rest on competence, not values | “I would refer them to someone else” |
Justification | Specific standards, cited by section | A general appeal to the ACA code |
Code selection | One code used consistently | Sampling ACA and IAMFC interchangeably |
Likely learning objectives
Inferred from the brief — check these against your own rubric.
- 01Locate an ethical issue in the practitioner's position rather than in the clients' conduct.
- 02Distinguish a competence limitation from a values conflict and respond to each appropriately.
- 03Apply referral standards correctly where personal values are engaged.
- 04Justify ethical reasoning with specific cited standards.
Read the full question
Review every instruction before using the planning guidance that follows.
Course-wide instructions that accompany this question
Important information for writing discussion questions and participation Hi Class, Assignment Application Addressing Ethical Issues Please read through the following information on writing a Discussion question response and participation posts. Contact me if you have any questions. Important information on Writing a Discussion Question Your response needs to be a minimum of 150 words (not including your list of references) There needs to be at least TWO references with ONE being a peer reviewed professional journal article. Include in-text citations in your response Do not include quotes—instead summarize and paraphrase the information Follow APA-7th edition Points will be deducted if the above is not followed Participation –replies to your classmates or instructor A minimum of 6 responses per week, on at least 3 days of the week. 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What the two-to-three page analysis must contain
- 01Identification of the chosen case study.
- 02A description of the ethical issue or issues present in it.
- 03An explanation of how you would address each issue.
- 04Justification using specific ACA or IAMFC standards.
- 05Two to three pages.
From naming the issue to citing the standard
Case identification and framing
Name the case and state where the ethical issue actually sits.
The ethical issue, named precisely
Distinguish a boundary-of-competence problem from a values-imposition problem.
How you would address it
Set out consultation, supervision, training, self-examination and, where relevant, disclosure.
Justification from the code
Cite the specific standards that support each step of the response.
Finding the standards you need to cite
Recommended databases
- The ACA Code of Ethics and the IAMFC Ethical Code
- PsycINFO
- PubMed Central
- Counseling Today archive
Search sequence
- 1.Read the code itself and locate the standards on boundaries of competence, multicultural competence, personal values and referral before writing, since the third bullet requires specific citation.
- 2.Read the background to the 2014 ACA revision, because the change to referral rules is the single most relevant piece of context for case two and it reverses the intuitive answer.
- 3.If you take case one, read a reference account of the cultural material rather than relying on general statements about collectivism, since the ethical response is to acquire competence rather than to generalise.
- 4.Look for literature on counsellor self-awareness and bias management, which supplies the substance of what 'address your own values' actually involves.
Ethical codes and cultural competence sources
These are authoritative starting points, not a ready-made bibliography. A qualified reviewer must confirm that each source fits the assignment and supports the claim beside which it is cited.
Nothing here is cleared for citation until you have read it.
- 01
A living document of ethical guidance - Counseling Today Archive
Counseling Today, American Counseling Association · 2014
The most important source for case two, and the one that reverses the intuitive answer. It explains why the 2014 revision required referrals to rest on competence rather than personal values — competence claims had been 'functioning as a smoke screen' for value-based refusal — and that standard A.4.b was expanded to require training and multicultural competency.
- 02
Cultural Religious Competence in Clinical Practice - StatPearls - NCBI Bookshelf
StatPearls Publishing, via NCBI Bookshelf · 2024
Supports case one's competence response with something concrete: profiles of more than twenty-five religious and cultural traditions, including Hinduism, alongside practical recommendations on training, interpreter use, family engagement and avoiding assumptions. Use it to show what acquiring competence would actually consist of rather than asserting that you would seek training.
- 03
Diversity and Discrimination in Health Care - StatPearls - NCBI Bookshelf
StatPearls Publishing, via NCBI Bookshelf · 2024
Covers implicit bias, microaggressions and the distinction between cultural competency, humility and awareness — which is the vocabulary the values-conflict analysis in case two needs. Its point that bias operates at individual, interpersonal, institutional and structural levels helps explain why self-examination is a required step rather than an optional one.
Before the ethics paper is submitted
Common mistakes
- Analysing the clients' behaviour instead of the counsellor's ethical position.
- Judging whether the Pathak parents are being unreasonable.
- Evaluating whether a non-monogamous relationship is viable.
- Proposing referral in case two, which the 2014 revision was written to restrict.
- Confusing a competence gap with a values conflict, or treating them as the same response.
- Choosing one side of case one's false binary rather than refusing it.
- Citing 'the ACA code' generally without naming specific standards.
- Mixing ACA and IAMFC standards rather than applying one consistently.
Submission checklist
- The chosen case is identified at the outset.
- The ethical issue is located with the counsellor, not the clients.
- Competence and values issues are named as distinct problems.
- Any referral discussion addresses the competence-versus-values distinction explicitly.
- Supervision, consultation or training appears as part of the response.
- At least two specific standards are cited by section.
- One code is used throughout.
- The paper stays within two to three pages.
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