Eight Step Ethical Decision-Making Model

Morality is a set of values held by a person in making when judging and evaluating what is deemed right or wrong, good or bad (Brandt, 1959).
When we talk about morality in counseling it’s about the reasoning by the counselor that has four levels. They are, personal intuition, ethical guidelines established by professional organizations, ethical principles and general theories of moral action (Kitchener, 1984).

Ethics is described as adopted principles that has relations to man’s behavior and moral decision making (Van Hoose & Kottler, 1985). Ethics is often thought as a synonym to morality. However, both have different meanings as stated above.

Values are defined as the continuous belief that a specific desired end state or way of conduct is desirable that varies among people from different cultures (Rokeach, 1973). Milton Rokeach divides them into two, i.e. Terminal and Instrumental values.

The Eight Step Ethical Decision-Making Model (Corey, Corey, & Callanan, 2011)
The Eight Step Ethical Decision-Making Model is about the collective effort between client and counselor and not about the counselor finding a solution for the client or making a decision for him (Corey, Corey & Haynes,1998). This model

This is to ensure that a particular issue is not a pseudo problem perceived as dilemma by the client. When an issue is agreed as a problem, the next step would be to identify the nature of it. Is it an ethical, moral, legal, professional or clinical? It is also possible that it may be of multiple in nature. Issues involving ethics are not easy and often complicated. Therefore, it is necessary to clear any ambiguity. Important information is to be retained and used while irrelevant ones may be discarded. Counselor would have to look at the situation and exercise wisdom before embarking on the process of consultation and touching on the nature of the