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Ethics & Behavior
ISSN: 1050-8422 (Print) 1532-7019 (Online) Journal homepage: https://www.tandfonline.com/loi/hebh20
A Case for an Expanded Framework of Ethics in
Practice
Merlinda Weinberg
To cite this article: Merlinda Weinberg (2005) A Case for an Expanded Framework of Ethics in
Practice, Ethics & Behavior, 15:4, 327-338, DOI: 10.1207/s15327019eb1504_4
To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1207/s15327019eb1504_4
Published online: 08 Jan 2010.
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ARTICLES
A Case for an Expanded Framework
of Ethics in Practice
Merlinda Weinberg
School of Social Work
Carleton University, Ottawa, Ontario
Using a case vignette as an illustration, an expanded framework for examining ethical issues in human service practice is proposed. The article argues that the helping
relationship is multiply constructed through discursive fields, rather than being a
given, and that the lens of ethics must be widened to understand both the highly contradictory nature of practice, with its accompanying paradoxes, and the broader
structures that constrain and influence practitioners. The article draws on the centrality of the concept of ethical trespass to recognize the inevitability of some level of
harm in the application of human service work, despite intention or skill. At the same
time, investigating workers’ uses of resistance to the dominant discourses is suggested as a means to edge toward the reduction of trespass.
Keywords: ethics, paradoxes, discourse, practice, resistance
THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK
In this article, I propose an expanded framework for examining ethical issues in
human service practice. I argue that the helping relationship is multiply constructed through discursive formations rather than being a given, and that the lens
of ethics must be widened to understand both the broader structures that constrain
ETHICS & BEHAVIOR, 15(4), 327–338
Copyright © 2005, Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc.
Correspondence should be addressed to Merlinda Weinberg, School of Social Work, Carleton University, DT 515, 1125 Colonel By Drive, Ottawa, Ontario K1S 5B6. E-mail: merlinda_weinberg@
carleton.ca
and influence practitioners and the highly contradictory nature of practice in which
ethical decisions are enacted. By an ethical relationship, I am referring to “a
nonviolative relationship to the Other … that assumes responsibility to guard the
Other against the appropriation that would deny her1 difference and singularity”
(Cornell, 1992, p. 62).
One primary trend in social work ethics has been to apply codes of ethics to
problematic situations to determine whether an individual has behaved “ethically.”
An ideal is laid out as a series of abstract principles in a code. In combination with
good decision making (Congress, 2000) and a method for tracking harms (Robinson & Reeser, 2000), it is assumed that by applying the code, a worker will be able
to avoid ethical breaches. This approach underscores a liberal humanist notion of
the centrality of the practitioner as an autonomous individual and the utilization of
rational cognitive processes. At the same time, this perspective deemphasizes or
ignores local, historical, or contingent factors, including structural inequities in
which practitioners operate (Rossiter, Prilleltensky, & Walsh-Bowers, 2000).
The tendency of individuals in the helping professions to take up the question of
ethics from a standpoint of privileging abstract principles that are decontextualized, rule bound, and linear; to understand and resolve ethical dilemmas in a
prescriptive fashion; seems like a limited tool for examining ethical problems in
practice. Like Rhodes (1992) and Rossiter et al. (2000), I believe the focus on
codes narrows the lens of ethics to a very small component of the work in the field,
omitting much of what is both relevant and troublesome in the experience of practitioners. Orlie (1997, p. 195) explained that “code-oriented moralities tend to normalize principle because rather than continually questioning proper conduct, they
express a desire to find the true ground of our being.” Because this is not possible,
they are inadequate and may lead to more rigid and doctrinaire stances in making
sense of ethics, when what is required is the flexibility that would come from understanding the relevance of context in practice.
In addition, the individualized focus in codes of ethics scapegoats both clients
and workers for profoundly complex systemic injustices and structural barriers. To
understand that a situation arises due to one’s positioning in broader social locations that are not solely of one’s own making may reduce the need to deny and/or
avoid examining possible wrongs and could decrease the emotional sting of these
incidents, lessening distress and possible burnout. Also, emphasis on the
worker–client dyad keeps from view the larger societal issues, such as class bias or
the inadequacy of resources, issues that must be confronted to render a more just
and civil social order.
328 WEINBERG
1Like Cornell, I will utilize the feminine form of pronouns as both a corrective to the dominant practice, which privileges men, but also because the field is dominated by women both as practitioners and
clients. Also, in this case illustration, both the workers and the client were women.
I conducted a qualitative exploratory study with five front-line workers whose
client2 population was young single mothers and their children. The participants
were all women who were seasoned practitioners working in a range of agencies in
urban and rural settings in Ontario, Canada. In extensive one-to-one interviews,
using the analytics of feminist poststructural theory and discourse analysis
(Fairclough, 1992), I explored how workers constituted the helping relationship. I
will offer a case vignette from this research as an illustration of a proposed enlarged notion of ethics in the human services. What will follow is in three segments: (a) the case example, (b) the worker’s attempts to utilize traditional codes of
ethics to guide her team’s reflections on the problems that emerged, and (c) the
main alternate concepts that I believe should be used to expand the concept of ethics in the field of practice.
CASE VIGNETTE OF JILL
AND HER SON
Kristine,3 a White worker in a rural agency serving pregnant and parenting young
mothers, was running a drop-in prenatal nutrition program in conjunction with the
public health department. Kristine was the participant in my study and the data that
follows was taken from my interviews with her. There were two other main players
in this vignette: a public health professional, Mary, and Jill, one of the clients of the
joint program. Jill also had a son, a “very rambunctious 3-year-old.” Mary, the public health professional, overheard Jill say to her son, “You’re going to fly out that
window in a minute if you don’t stop jumping around.” Mary perceived this statement as requiring her to alert the Children’s Aid Society (CAS), the child welfare
organization in Ontario mandated with the responsibility to protect children. Without consulting anyone, and unbeknownst to Jill or Kristine, Mary did contact the
CAS. Jill discovered that Mary had informed the CAS about her parenting and approached Kristine, saying she was very uncomfortable continuing in the program
with Mary present because Mary had not come to her to say that she had contacted
the CAS.
Kristine attempted to facilitate a discussion between Mary and Jill. She argued that the incident was “impacting on [Jill] coming” to the program. Although at first Mary resisted, ultimately Mary agreed to a three-way meeting and
Kristine attempted a “conflict resolution” between the public health professional, Mary, and the client, Jill. Kristine’s perception was that Jill had “handled
CASE FOR AN EXPANDED FRAMEWORK OF ETHICS 329
2I have settled on the term client as the most neutral and most commonly used term to refer to individuals on the receiving end of services by social workers.
3All names are pseudonyms.
[herself] very maturely” and “gently” and that the mediation had been effective.
However, a week later, Mary’s supervisor called the agency to state that Kristine
had “harassed … and coerced” Mary and that because of her feelings about
Kristine, Mary was refusing to continue her work in the joint program. Kristine’s
supervisor was out of town. The situation escalated, with the board of directors
at first censuring Kristine and putting in writing that Kristine was not to have
any contact with the public health worker. After the supervisor had returned to
work and had supported Kristine’s efforts, the board backed down, apologizing,
and sanctioning Kristine’s handling of the situation.
Because Mary, Mary’s supervisor, and the board of directors of Kristine’s own
agency did not experience Kristine’s interventions positively, Kristine was left
feeling dismayed and personally blamed without adequate means to address what
had occurred. She saw the situation that she found herself in as idiosyncratic and
individualized. She said, “I spend so much time honestly paying attention to the
code of ethics and making sure that I’m using them as guiding principles and I just
was like, whoo, maybe I did do something wrong.” In general, Kristine felt misunderstood and injured by this episode and talked about her attempts having “backfired.” Kristine used the code of ethics in social work to attempt to make sense of
what had transpired in this scenario, to justify her actions, and to ascertain whether
she had violated any ethical principles. She told me that she, her supervisor, and
her team had gone through the code of ethics and were satisfied that her behavior
had been appropriate. She stated there was even a tenet about advocacy with other
professionals, which was the stance she felt she had taken with the public health
worker and her client. Although she was relieved that there was nothing in the code
to suggest she had erred, being self-reflexive, she felt that perhaps there had been a
failure on her part to sufficiently negotiate with the public health professional before a joint meeting with the client. Kristine expressed that, were she confronted
with a similar situation again, she would take a professional aside and attempt to
process the incident with that individual before attempting a mediation between
the worker and the client.
I believe that the use of the code of ethics was a somewhat limited vehicle to examine the ethical complexities in this practice situation for Kristine. Because the
lens of the codes was focused primarily on the relationship between worker and
client, it omitted significant factors that operated in this case. Furthermore, a belief
in applying the codes, as if truth were objective, only requiring clear thinking, fostered a belief on the part of Kristine that, by lucid judgment and careful conduct,
she could act ethically and would be perceived by others as acting ethically. The individualized focus left her feeling individually and personally responsible for significant structural constraints.
Figure 1 illustrates the means Kristine used to attempt to resolve the dilemmas
for the triad of individuals in this scenario.
330 WEINBERG
EXPANDED ANALYTICAL TOOLS FOR ETHICS
Ethical Trespass
One could suggest that this was simply a case of poor communication, but I believe
the structures of helping, in and of themselves, set the stage for the inevitability of
ethical trespass. By ethical trespass, I am using a notion by Arendt (1958) elaborated by Orlie (1997). Orlie defined ethical trespass as “the harmful effects … that
inevitably follow not from our intentions and malevolence but from our participation in social processes and identities” (p. 5). Trespass is the harm that follows
from one’s actions, sometimes unintended or unforeseen, because in action some
options are opened, whereas others are foreclosed. Orlie perceives that all of us
trespass, including but most especially, “the ‘responsible,’ well-behaved, predictable subjects of social order who reinforce and extend its patterns of rule” (p. 23).
Social workers and public health nurses are those responsible subjects because,
through their implementation of policies, legislation, and what they understand to
be their professional duties, they determine what is acceptable and appropriate behavior, such as the mothering practices of Jill. By these determinations, patterns of
rule are extended. The effects of one’s actions impact differently on a multiplicity
of individuals, having ripple effects beyond the immediate event. For example, in
Mary attempting to protect the rambunctious 3-year-old by alerting the CAS, Jill’s
mothering capability was impugned, and Jill no longer wanted to continue in the
program designed to provide education to improve her parenting skills. This led to
CASE FOR AN EXPANDED FRAMEWORK OF ETHICS 331
FIGURE 1 The means Kristine used to attempt to resolve the dilemmas in the case
vignette.
Kristine’s attempt at conflict resolution, which left Mary feeling coerced and
Kristine’s good intentions in shatters. All three central figures in this vignette felt
trespassed against: Jill, the mother of the child, because the CAS was contacted
about her mothering practices; Mary, the public health worker, because she perceived the mediation as a harassment; and Kristine, my participant, because she
was censured for her attempts to resolve the conflict.
What is the value of the concept of ethical trespass? I believe when workers feel
individually responsible for harm, it is more difficult for them to acknowledge and
confront the potential damage inherent in their positions, regardless of their behavior. This is particularly true in a culture that expects professionals to make accurate
and appropriate judgments and in which they are held accountable for injury.
There is an irony in using the concept of ethical trespass. Although all professionals must be held accountable for unintended harm, to understand trespass and the
inescapability of this harm depersonalizes this issue by recognizing that all responsible and caring individuals are subject to trespass, regardless of intention or skill.
Had Kristine been familiar with this concept, could it have provided emotional
comfort to her and allowed her to be compassionate toward herself and possibly
Mary, who was caught in the same conundrum?
Centrality of Paradoxes in Clinical Practice
Better communication with a colleague would not have resolved the inherent paradoxes in practice that unavoidably lead to ethical trespass. What are those paradoxes? One relates to judgment. Judgment is central to the positioning of human
service workers, both to safeguard those who are the weakest in our society, as well
as to determine the allocation of limited resources. At the same time, workers must
be nonjudgmental to engage clients and avoid shaming them. This is a key principle of clinical practice (Miley, O’Melia, & DuBois, 2001). In the case of Jill, there
was both a child and young mother. The importance of protecting the more vulnerable, in this case a 3-year-old, led to a judgment about the mother’s competency by
both the public health worker and my participant. This is an unavoidable and necessary component of the positioning of human service workers, leading to the ineluctable nature of ethical trespass. In this case, Kristine and Mary diverged in
their judgments about the potential of harm to the child. Kristine said, “Maybe
[Jill] was going to do it [i.e., is throw her child out the window], maybe she wasn’t,
I don’t know.” A judgment was implied when she labeled Mary’s decision to contact the CAS as “the silliest reason I can ever think of to report to the CAS.” By a
recognition of this paradox, (judgment as intrinsic to the positioning of human service workers but problematic in the process of engagement), Kristine could have
been assisted in understanding the complexity of “help,” regardless of her good intentions or communication skills.
332 WEINBERG
There are other key paradoxes in the helping relationship. One paradox that is
fundamental in human service work is that usually there is more than one client in a
case. The implication of this structure is that what may meet the needs of one may
not for another. In this case vignette, protecting a “rambunctious” 3-year-old by
contacting the CAS may be punitive toward the mother. Workers are often on the
horns of that dilemma. Also workers in social service settings are caught in a mix
of caring and control, given their mandated responsibilities to abide by legislation
that may be seen as punishing by clients. This additional quandary underlay the
conflict that resulted from Mary getting in touch with the CAS to fulfill her statutory responsibilities as she understood them, even if it injured her relationship with
Jill. A related paradox is that the “good” client is one who is open about aspects of
her life. However in the act of disclosing, she makes herself more vulnerable to be
seen as inadequate (such as Jill was by making the remark about her son), leading
to the increased potential to be disciplined in some way (such as having the CAS
contacted). However, the client who does not reveal can be perceived as resistant
and therefore also at risk for punishment. The worker is caught in this bind too,
knowing her task is to uncover, but also aware that these revelations increase her
potential power, which could be viewed as injurious by the client or result in unintended harm. Kristine identified that in “being a professional … there’s a power issue … I am privy to information [that] maybe she [the client] hasn’t shared with
anyone else or that no one else knows and now it’s in my hands.”
Discursive Fields
How did Kristine and Mary arrive at their diverging judgments about Jill’s behavior? I think that the concept of discursive fields is useful in answering this question
and would provide a valuable means to enlarge an understanding of ethics in practice. By discursive field, I am referring to the organizing logic that workers utilize
to give some coherent shape to understanding their work and their world. Discourse refers to “structures of knowledge and systematic ways of carving out reality” (Chambon, Irving, & Epstein, 1999, p. 272) that compete to give meaning to a
particular concept or concepts that influence the possibility of how social institutions, processes, and relationships are organized. By their formation, things are accomplished, regulated, enabled, and ordered, as well as constrained, delimited, and
limited. I envision discursive fields as being within a permeable dome under which
discourses from the broader world circulate for an individual and from which an
individual draws to make sense of her world.
Thesignificanceofthisconceptistoarguethat“helpingrelationships”arenotobjective, concrete phenomena but are constructed through complex concepts that
both arise from and become discourse. Therefore approaches to ethics that begin
from the standpoint of objective knowledge “out there” do not have a means to take
into account the subtle and divergent ways that practitioners make sense of the helpCASE FOR AN EXPANDED FRAMEWORK OF ETHICS 333
ing relationship, their clients, and their own subject positions as workers, nor do
these approaches to ethics have the wealth of resources available in an analysis of
discourseformakingsenseofwhatconstitutesethicaldilemmasforanindividual.
Neither the creation of dilemmas nor their resolution can be understood outside
of a concept of discursive fields. One of the essential elements in Kristine’s discursive field about the helping relationship was her understanding of judgment. Frequently, in our interviews, she spoke about not wanting to judge her clients. In fact,
for her, good practice was contingent on being nonjudgmental as a primary stance
with clients. Kristine articulated, “I think that I’ve become … a good social worker
because I have been able to see past the labels and judgments of people.” In her explanation of the events that occurred in the case of Jill, she framed her struggle by
saying that Mary “had made [Jill] feel really judged.”
At the same time, she believed it was possible to “be nonjudgmental and still
challenge people around their own thinking.” In those situations in which Kristine
felt judgment was required, she believed the manner in which those judgments
should be enacted was with transparency and openness. She stated,
as a professional … I always talk to women, unless I’m afraid of them running away or of sexual abuse. I always tell women that I have a concern, I’m
going to consult with CAS, and I will come clean with them. They don’t have
to like it but I let them know, before, if I can.
She went on to state that “it’s only fair. I mean it’s [their] life that I’m affecting and
I want them to know that I … did it [contacted the child welfare authorities] out of
concern even though it doesn’t feel like it for them.” This was not the approach that
Mary had taken with Jill. I would speculate that Mary’s discursive field about good
practice would probably be quite different and she might put a lower priority on being nonjudgmental or frank as elements in her discursive field. In part, the dilemma
for Kristine about this case arose from her differing stance about what constituted
“good” practice from that enacted by Mary, the public health nurse. The creation of
Kristine’s dilemma arose from a discursive construction of the “good” practitioner
and how one should deal with judgment in the helping relationship.
Also, key in Kristine’s discursive field was the code of ethics on which she drew
to assess what had transpired in this scenario, to justify her behavior, as well as to
try and resolve the dilemma that arose. By choosing this discourse as primary in
her field, other possible approaches to ethics were not in view, whereas the individualized and privatized elements of ethical relations were highlighted.
Structural Complexities and Inequalities
A fourth component that would enhance an understanding of ethics would be to
emphasize both the structural complexities and institutional requirements in which
the helping relationship occurs. For example, workers have obligations to their
334 WEINBERG
agency and to other professionals that transcend or compete with those toward
their clients. Kristine identified a structural dilemma: maintaining a united front
with her coworker so as not to undermine the work of a colleague, versus protecting and advocating for a client whom she felt was being unjustly treated. Kristine
talked about her struggle in the following exchange:
K: It’s sometimes very difficult for me to … maintain this team approach …
wanting to validate their [the client’s] feelings about feeling disrespected
[by a coworker] without giving away too much of my own feeling. Like,
“yeah, you’re right, that was a disrespectful thing to say” and somehow
making it a “me and her” against the rest of the professionals involved.
M: … and why don’t you want to do that?
K: … because it’s not going to be helpful. I mean, she still needs to have the
support of … the public health nurse …
Finding the balance in alliances is an especially complicated challenge given the
classed and raced aspects of social service work and the level of surveillance to
which clients are subject. By identifying the structural dimensions of practice as part
of a study of ethics, an examination of the priorities and values of the broader society
toward both the have-nots and those who attempt to serve them would be fostered.
Although a middle-class mother might threaten to throw her child out the window in
frustration, there is a significantly decreased likelihood that a helping professional
would overhear such a remark and view it as cause to contact the CAS. But impoverishedmothersaremorelikelytocomeunderthescrutinyofhelpingprofessionalsbecause they more often must turn to human service agencies to meet even basic needs.
AccordingtoKristine,Jilllamented,“Ifeellike[Maryis]watchingmyeverymove.”
Kristine was aware of the likelihood that these observations would be stigmatizing.
She stated, “so much of the world looks down on young moms.” I think it is also possible that, if Kristine had had such a structural analysis about class and surveillance
as part of her discursive field of what constituted ethics, it might have supplemented
the one drawn on in the code of ethics about advocacy and might have made Kristine
feel more comfortable about her decision to support Jill at the expense of providing a
united front with Mary.
In addition, this case vignette illustrates the pressure on Kristine from other players in organizations: her board of directors, as well as the public health department.
Kristine felt sullied in terms of her professional reputation, stating, “to call me unprofessional … it just … blew me away.” In answer to my question about why the
term unprofessional was so emotionally charged for her, Kristine answered, “it’s a
small community agency … we’re constantly having to fight for funding.” The implication was that her actions had consequences beyond that of the client. She was
aware of the threat to the viability of her agency, if as a representative, she was perceived of as unprofessional. In an environment that operates from a “politics of scarcity” (Bakker, 1996, p. 5), there are fewer resources but more demands weighing on
CASE FOR AN EXPANDED FRAMEWORK OF ETHICS 335
workers, particularly for those individuals to be seen as supporting those goals of an
agency that will ensure its continued existence, even when those goals might differ
from those of a particular client. This adds one more dimension to the likelihood of
trespass and the possibility of ethical dilemmas.
Resistance
The final dimension that I would highlight is the utility of examining workers’
resistances in practice. By resistance, I am applying a Foucauldian understanding of
resistance as “the odd term in relations of power; they are inscribed in the latter as an
irreducible opposite” (Foucault, 1976/1978, p. 96). Resistances can inch toward
trespass reduction when they question taken-for-granted notions, focus on social
justice and on the elimination of inequity, and lead to action on those injustices.
Resistances can subvert and redirect power, representing the possibility of human
agency to transform society. Exploring workers’resistances offers one way to shake
upthenormativeunderstandings ofhelp.Whenthepowerinthehelpingrelationship
is acknowledged and seen as potentially problematic, workers may move toward
more ethical relations. Kristine’s awareness of her power in the relationship and her
struggle to use it to protect rather than harm was crucial. When, as an explanation for
her approach to contacting the CAS, Kristine said that “it’s only fair … it’s her life
I’m affecting,” she was demonstrating her recognition of the power imbalance in the
helping relationship and her problematization of that disparity. Her mediation between Mary and Jill (albeit unsuccessful) was a resistance to the status quo and an attempt to shift the balance of power. I believe that Kristine’s empathy about making
the program a safe place for Jill, and her use of power to advocate for this client, were
efforts to move toward an ethical relationship.
It would be possible to decide that, because trespass is inevitable, there is no
point in doing anything. The significance of an emphasis on resistances is to shift
away from that nihilistic conclusion. Although identifying which principles to apply will always be inadequate because in that choice some things are excluded and
others rigidified, I think it is important to offer some standards in a field that is
grounded in flesh-and-blood work. Because human service workers are involved
in an applied social science, I believe this identification is a necessary aspect of
ethics, notwithstanding the paradox. These principles include recognizing the inevitability of harm while valuing difference and supporting interdependence.
CONCLUSION
I believe cynicism, self-hatred, and despair have accompanied the trend toward
theories of social reproduction in the human services, particularly in social work
(e.g., Margolin, 1997). I do not think our society would be better off without help-
336 WEINBERG
ing professionals, despite the flaws. The value of looking at how to reduce trespass
is to gesture toward an attitude of humility but also to hope in the potential of moving toward nonviolative relationships in the human services. Adding the concepts
of ethical trespass, discursive fields, the inevitability of paradoxes with their attendant harms, and resistance exhorts practitioners toward self-reflection, doubt, and
compassion while offering some belief in the possibility of edging toward more
ethical work, despite the irreconcilable realities and the highly contradictory positioning of practitioners. Figure 2 offers a portrait of an expanded concept of ethics
in practice that could have been applied to the scenario of Kristine, Mary, and Jill.
In my last interview with Kristine, when I asked for one thing she would do to
change the field, she responded, “I just think that … you need to know what your
values are before you do any kind of social work.” Beyond the personal self-reflection of values suggested by Kristine or the standard utilization of codes, I believe it
is necessary to recognize the ineluctable nature of trespass, in part due to the intrinCASE FOR AN EXPANDED FRAMEWORK OF ETHICS 337
FIGURE 2 An expanded concept of ethics in practice.
sic paradoxes in practice. At the same time, by critiquing the liberal humanist trend
that focuses on the individualized relationship of the worker and client, and broadening the lens to an emphasis on structural and institutional inequities, as well as
discursive production, I believe human service workers can move closer to ethical
relations with clients.
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