4.6 Conclusion

Working as a counseling professional requires practitioners to be adequately prepared to address various ethical dilemmas. Providers today interface with increasingly complex systems for which a heightened degree of diligence is warranted to engage in ethical, professional conduct and enact meaningful change at the systemic level. Fostering self-awareness, bracketing personal beliefs, and self-exploration regarding one’s own ethical framework are essential components of developing a personal sense of professional ethics. This process will be further explored in Chapter 6 as we discuss values exploration and ethical bracketing in greater depth, as well as Chapter 17 with a discussion of professional ethics in the context of private practice.