11.8 Dual Business and Dual Professional Relationships

Dual business relationships occur between counselor and client when extraneous business-related, financial, or employment arrangements exist between them (Moleski, 2005). Examples of dual business arrangements include counselor and client acting as business partners, being involved in the same business venture, having an employer-employee relationship, or having vested, shared financial interest in a deal (Zur, 2014). A dual business relationship can also emerge from bartering arrangements, discussed later in this chapter. A dual business relationship can also exist if one acts as a customer to the other. For example, if a counselor buys office supplies from a client’s business or place of employment, if the client acts as a person toward their counselor, or hires a client to perform services for them (i.e., lawn work, home construction, house cleaning, dog walking, prepare their taxes or act as investment/ insurance broker) (Zur, 2014); Some of these arrangements may be more impactful to the professional relationships than others due to the nature of sensitive information shared, and counselors evaluate the magnitude of impact in deciding to proceed. Counselors who run a side business must keep these ventures separate from their counseling work to promote client autonomy and beneficence. For example, they may sell artwork, dietary supplements, workbooks or novels, subscriptions for webinars, etc. If their business operations come into play, they must practice veracity by acting transparently, naming conflicts of interest, and discussing openly as part of ongoing informed consent.

Dual professional relationships exist if there is a secondary collegial or professional relationship with a client (Moleski, 2005). Examples of dual professional relationships include attending the same conference, training, or meeting, co-authoring a book, attending the same university, or if they belong to the same professional group (Zur, 2014). In some cases, counselors might find themselves in situations where they are asked to provide services to relatives, partners, friends, colleagues, or physicians who are referral sources (Zur, 2014). This is a dual professional relationship because the counselor has multiple roles. Additionally, the counselor has access to more information about the client through knowing a mutual person than they would have if they only knew them in counseling. For students, interns, and pre-licensed counselors with supervisor-supervisee relationships, an external professional relationship influences the bond and power dynamics at play. Counselors who work on multidisciplinary teams (often in programmatic care settings) remain aware of dual professional relationships with clients when working as their group counselor and individual counselor. Access to clinical information and the counselor’s style often differ between settings, which could need clarification for therapeutic relationships.

Counselors may encounter dual relationships that intersect secondary business and professional roles. In these cases, financial arrangements and social dynamics may be in the secondary relationship, significantly impacting the primary counseling relationship. In all cases, counselors maintain awareness that they cannot know at the outset where the counseling relationship will go or how a dual relationship will evolve (Younggren, 2004). Engaging in dual relationships at one point may pose no risk of harm to a client, but this likelihood can increase in unknown circumstances in the future. To account for these factors, counselors apply ethical decision-making procedures, which include consultation and supervision, and adequately document all steps taken to justify ethical and legal practices.