Abstract:

The Professional Boards and regulatory bodies in various countries set, maintain and apply fair standards of professional conduct and practice in order to effectively protect the interests of the public. Individual practitioners at different levels, registered with these councils are held responsible for adherence to the ethical and professional conduct.

This paper aims to reflect on the ethical requirements for counselling practices in higher education, highlighting and reflecting on the importance of ethical practice for practitioners in colleges and universities. The paper will provide a background to ethical practice and reflect on the emphasis for ethical conduct when providing counselling to students in our institutions.

Having stressed the importance of ethical conduct in higher education, the presentation will highlight some of the ethical challenges with which university counsellors are faced, given the context in which student counselling is provided at the institutions of higher learning. These ethical challenges emanate from a number of diverse factors; ranging from student and lecturer expectations, lecturers expectations, referrals from other support units in the university, to the use of technology. Oversight by university management and its ombud, having to deal with internal and external professionals in addition to significant others, provide dilemmas Student counsellors find themselves at the centre of all these factors. Such factors will therefore be discussed with examples from practice, illustrating some ethical dilemmas facing university counsellors and how best these dilemmas can be dealt with based on the ethical requirements.

Keywords:

Professional conduct, ethical dilemma, student counselling, higher education, ethical conduct, university counsellors.