Ethical issues for psychological practice in a large organisation

Societies in general have had a long-standing concern with the ethical behaviour of professionals. The current study described the role codes of ethical behaviour have played in the development of professions such as psychology. Various ethical theories were discussed, including two approaches that have been focussed on psychology: Principle and virtue ethics. The evolution of psychology’s professional associations in Australia and other English speaking countries was outlined together with the development of ethics codes which set minimum standards of expected ethical behaviour and aim to protect psychologists’ clients. While overseas studies have found that the ethical issues many psychologists report as most troubling are confidentiality and dual role relationships, these studies typically sample counselling or clinical psychologists. Very few studies have investigated the ethical issues confronting Australian psychologists who work in organisations. The primary aim of this study was to identify, categorise and analyse the ethical issues confronted by psychologists employed in an Australia-wide organisation. Seventy-eight psychologists working in the Australian Defence Forces (ADF) were surveyed on a range of ethical beliefs and practices. They were also invited to describe real-life incidents from their work in which they had perceived an ethical conflict. The survey results showed that whilst the sample agreed on a number of ethical issues there was also a marked lack of consensus on a broad range of beliefs and practises that are regularly dealt with by ADF psychologists. The ethical dilemmas described by the psychologists were categorised according to four different frameworks identified in the literature. These were based on two empirical studies (MacKay & O’Neill, 1995; Pope & Vetter, 1992), the three ethical principles of the APS Code of Ethics (2002) and Kitchener’s (1984) ethical principles for psychologists. Quantitative and qualitative results suggested that, for psychologists working in an organisation, the dual relationships intrinsic to such a working environment generate a range of ethical issues, particularly related.