I spend a lot of my time during the year teaching professional , in courses and workshops. We cannot cover every potential situation that students or workshop attendees will face. What we do is to provide principles and strategies to use when they face situations with ethical dimensions.

Teaching ethics is a little like teaching music appreciation: You play a few passages of Beethoven and Bach and highlight the differences—in instrumentation, form, etc. Then you hope that when students hear some music, they can identify at least the period, if not the composer, of the music, even though they’ve never heard that particular passage before.

I believe that virtually all situations have ethical dimensions. I hope my students and attendees become more attuned to the ethical issues that permeate their professional lives. Ordinarily at this point I’d give you a clear, perceptive, and succinct example of a professional case or scenario. But I’m between semesters so my example of ethical sensitivity comes from my recent vacation trip (I’ll still try to be clear and succinct.).

Source: Mitch Handelsman

We had a wonderful time on our trip! We took a few pictures, but we were too busy watching other vacationers take pictures of each other, themselves, and their entrees to take pictures of our own.

When I came back I wanted to share vacation pictures with my friends (both of them). So what I did was pull some pictures off the internet and put them on my phone with the ones I took.

Here’s where the ethics comes in. Consider these questions:

Do I share pictures of places we didn’t go and say we were there? No. That’s dishonest. In ethical language, I would be violating the ethical rule of veracity.

Do I share my internet pictures and say that I took them? No. Veracity again. What I'll do is share my pictures and tell my friends where I found them.

Do I force my friends to look at my vacation pictures? No. That would be coercion, which would violate the ethical principle of respect for autonomy.

Source: Mitch Handelsman (really)

If people choose to see my pictures (autonomy), do I show them all 776 pictures in one sitting? Nope. Violation of the do no harm principle (nonmaleficence). I’ll just hand them my phone and give them the freedom to look at as many or as few—as quickly or as slowly—as they’d like.

I’m not saying that these questions are earth-shattering, or even important, in everyday life. The point is that there are always opportunities to keep ethical skills sharp—even on vacation. Kind of like hearing a string quartet on our Pandora and trying to guess the composer--before switching back to Disco Radio.

Meanwhile: Happy 2017! And I’d love to see all your pictures from your vacation. Would you show them to me? Better yet (veracity), just pass me your phone…

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Mitch Handelsman is professor of psychology at the University of Colorado Denver. With Samuel Knapp and Michael Gottlieb, he is the co-author of Ethical Dilemmas in Psychotherapy: Positive Approaches to Decision Making (American Psychological Association, 2015). Mitch is also the co-author (with Sharon Anderson) of Ethics for Psychotherapists and Counselors: A Proactive Approach (Wiley-Blackwell, 2010), and an associate editor of the two-volume APA Handbook of Ethics in Psychology (American Psychological Association, 2012). But here’s what he’s most proud of: He collaborated with pioneering musician Charlie Burrell on Burrell’s autobiography.

© 2016 by Mitchell M. Handelsman. All Rights Reserved