AVOIDING ABUSE OF PROFESSIONAL ROLE
Ethics Statement # 5
Professional Members are aware that their role in the lab is to work on program objectives, and not to satisfy their own needs. Professional Members are expected to be actively aware of their own needs and the impact of their needs upon their professional work. They are expected to use spaces such as clinicing sessions or peer meetings, rather than interaction with participants, to resolve their needs and dilemmas.
Ethics Statement # 6
Professional Members keep in mind the theoretical base for the possible consequences of their interventions, especially when introducing innovations or experimenting with new approaches. They use clinicing and staff meetings to plan as well as review the impact and consequences of such interventions.
Ethics Statement # 7
The roles played by Professional Members (e.g. as facilitator, mentor, regional and national institutional roles) are recognised as powerful roles providing them with an unusual opportunity to exercise power for the purpose of assisting others to grow and learn about themselves. Professional Members are expected to be constantly vigilant that this power is used at all times to promote the growth and enhance the dignity of the participants.
Ethics Statement # 8
The review of a lab member’s participation in the lab or readiness to move forward in the Professional Development Program is based on agreed upon criteria with abundant caution that this is not coloured by past experiences, past data, personal biases, or personal gain.
Ethics Statement # 9
Professional Members do not engage in erotic or sexual contact with participants in an ISABS program. This includes verbal or non-verbal interactions of a sexual or romantic nature not necessarily involving direct physical contact. (In this context the definition of the term ‘program’ is expanded depending upon whether the Professional Member is a Human Process Lab Facilitator, in a Mentor-PDP candidate relationship, facilitator in an extended Professional Development Programme or working on a consulting assignment for ISABS client. It also includes before or after the program contact with participants/clients when the professional member is likely to have the role-related power described in Ethics Statement # 7 above.)
Ethics Statement # 10
Professional Members are expected to confront any perceived violation of ISABS’ stated ethical principles by a colleague in an ISABS program. When there is evidence that a colleague has violated a stated ethics principle, it is an ethical obligation of professional members to make a written report of such violation to the Ethics Committee.
Any transgression of ethics by a facilitator during the lab needs to be confronted by the co-facilitator in or outside the lab as appropriate. If necessary, the issue must also be brought up in clinicing. If the issue still appears to be unresolved, the co-facilitator has an ethical obligation to record the facts in writing and bring them to the attention of the Ethics Committee and Dean Programmes.
Ethics Statement # 11
In the event of serious unresolved issues emerging between two Professional Members facilitating a lab, the concerned professional members are expected to bring up and actively address these issues in the faculty clinicing sessions, to ensure that the program objectives are not compromised due to unresolved issues between facilitators.
