Nancy C. Calley begins with an examination of the purpose of ethics and a review of the underlying values guiding ethical standards of the counseling profession and the counseling literature dedicated to applied ethics. The objective of the article is to promote a context-specific focus on applied ethics, addressing the needs of community counselors working within public human service systems. The article is divided into sections focusing on the Purpose of Ethics, Applied Ethics in the Counseling Profession, and Contextual Understanding of Ethics in the Counseling Practice, etc.
The author could have explained in depth the importance of Ethics are critical to the counseling profession, uniting professionals in common beliefs, values, and actions and thus, promoting a collective professional identity while ensuring that individuals who belong to the profession engage in behaviors that place clients at the center of service delivery. The field of counseling has progressively expanded its efforts and focus on ethics, especially in the areas of scholarship related to ethics education (Corey et al., 2007).
Calley explains that each professional counselor has an enormous responsibility to uphold the public trust and must seek high levels of training, education, and supervision in the ethical application of counseling practices, in particular because counselors often practice behind closed doors with little oversight. She displays this with the Ethics into Action Map which is a useful tool. She adds that human service organizations may find the tool particularly useful in addressing the complexities related to work within specific systems, attending to the multiple stakeholders directing services, and supporting professionals from varying backgrounds (i.e., counselors, social workers, psychologists) that have various ethical codes. Finally, the tool might prove helpful