Ethical Decision-Making: Supervision Suggestions Utilizing a Review of the Ewing v. Goldstein Court Case

A challenge for counselor educators, counselor trainees, and supervisors alike is how to process ethical and legal conflicts supervisees have when making decisions about client care. This paper begins with a court case review and then outlines the Wheeler and Bertram (2012) ethical decision-making model that can be utilized to demonstrate supervision strategies. This paper provides a legal case history of the Ewing v. Goldstein case and delineates possible discussion topics. This court case has merit for discussion as it adds another dimension to the Tarasoff “duty to warn.” Counselor educators and counseling supervisors can enhance student learning of ethical codes and legal processes and principles by following a similar process described in this article. This article includes one of several ethical decision-making processes or models, potential legal and ethical concerns, and questions for supervisees, supervisors, and counselor educators.