ACA Code of Ethics Preamble

The American Counseling Association, founded in 1952, is an educational, scientific, and professional organization. It is the largest association of professional counselors and counseling students in the United States. Counseling is a professional relationship that empowers diverse individuals, families, and groups to accomplish mental health, wellness, education, and career goals. Counselors are credentialed professionals trained at the master’s and doctoral levels, following rigorous standards of preparation. Counselors work in a variety of settings and serve in multiple capacities.

The Code of Ethics holds ACA members to the highest professional ethical standards in the practice of counseling.

Professional Values

Counselors recognize that ethical conduct requires ongoing commitment and effort to act ethically and to encourage ethical behavior by counselors, students, supervisees, employees, and colleagues.

Professional values are an important way of living out an ethical commitment. The following are core professional values of the counseling profession:

• enhancing human development throughout the lifespan;
• honoring diversity and embracing a multicultural approach in support of the worth, dignity, potential, and uniqueness of people within their social and cultural contexts;
• promoting social justice;
• safeguarding the integrity of the counselor-client relationship; and
• practicing in a competent and ethical manner.

Principle and Virtue Ethics

Professional values provide a conceptual basis for ethical principles and virtues and are the foundation for ethical behavior and decision-making. Principle ethics are grounded in moral principles, which are agreed upon assumptions or beliefs about ideals that are shared by members of the counseling profession. The fundamental principles of professional ethical behavior are

• respect for autonomy, or fostering the right to control the direction of one’s life;
• nonmaleficence, or avoiding actions that cause harm;
• beneficence, or working for the good of the individual and society by promoting mental health and well-being;
• justice, or treating individuals equitably and fostering fairness and equality;
• fidelity, or honoring commitments and keeping promises, including fulfilling one’s responsibilities of trust in professional relationships; and
• veracity, or dealing truthfully with individuals with whom counselors come into professional contact.

The basic assumption of virtue principles is that professional ethics involve more than moral actions; they also involve traits of character or virtue. Principle ethics ask, What should I do?; virtue ethics ask, Who should I be? Key virtue ethics include

• integrity, or being motivated to do what is right because one believes it is right, not because one feels obligated or fears the consequences;
• discernment, or the ability to perceive the ethically relevant aspects of a situation, knowing what principles apply, and taking decisive action;
• acceptance of emotion, or recognizing the role of emotion in ethical decisions and believing that emotion informs reason;
• compassion, or being sensitive to the suffering of others;
• self-awareness, or knowing one’s assumptions, beliefs, and biases and how these may affect one’s relationships and interactions with others; and
• interdependence with the community, or remaining connected to the expectations and values of one’s communities.