Ethical Decision Making

The Dilemmas of Starting a Relationship Skills Group

Liberty University

Abstract

When providing counseling services to individuals or a group of individuals, one needs to be cautious on his or her approach to everyone’s specific needs. Even though there are a variety of methods to solving a problem, some methods encounter ethical dilemmas. The ethical dilemma is about Jane, a counselor at a community college, who starts a relationship skills group for nine individuals between the ages of 18-25. In her primary course of action, she encounters several ethical dilemmas: she fails to provide sufficient information about the group in an advertisement, encounters ethical problems within the enrollment process, fails to provide an informed consent to the enrollees, and puts the other attendees at risk of harm. By identifying the code of ethics involved and the moral principles within her primary course of action, Jane is able to purpose and evaluate several options that she can properly apply to her final course of action, eliminating the ethical dilemmas.

The Dilemmas of Starting a Relationship Skills Group

Identify the Problem

Jane is a counselor who decides to start an age-restricted “relationship skills” group. In order to promote her new group, she posts an advertisement with minimum information. She orders the counseling center to admit the first nine students who call to enroll, without asking any questions about the enrollees. At the time of the first meeting, the group consists of seven women and two men. Having never met the attendees, Jane tells the students to share the reason why they have decided to join the group. Daryl, one of the men in attendance, describes his situation. He shares that he was just released from jail after serving time for domestic violence. He also expresses that he still contains feelings of anger toward women. Due to Daryl’s confession, five of the seven women in the group...