Introduction
Ethics in interpersonal communication is an important, even basic condition for mutual understanding. Clearly, for human services professionals, integrating ethical requirements into their behavior, professional practice, and communication is critical. The profession of Human Services Professional appeared in the USA in the 1960s, and along with it the Ethical Standards for Human Services Professionals were developed (Pearce, 2022). This paper aims to explain the importance of Ethics for the Human Services Professionals when working with clients and interacting with colleagues and discuss the potential short and long-term consequences of unethical actions and behaviors.
Importance of Ethics
Professionals providing human services should consider their duty of being ethical as regards their clients and co-workers. Not less importantly, the Ethical Standards imply that Human Services Professionals should feel responsible to the public and society, the profession, themselves, and their students. Regarding the clients, the human services providers should be client-oriented and consider the clients’ strengths, seek their consent for services, respect privacy and confidentiality, protect clients from danger and harm, avoid dual relationships, prohibit sexual and romantic relationships, ensure not imposing personal values and biases, protecting clients; record and use technology in legal and confidential ways (Pearce, 2022). These requirements are presented in paragraphs of Ethical Standards that specifically consider the responsibility to clients. Particular attention is nowadays paid to confidentiality, consent, and supporting clients.
As regards the responsibility to colleagues, human service professionals should ethically collaborate and coordinate services while not duplicating them, resolve conflicts directly with persons, respond to unethical behavior, and keep consultations between colleagues private. Following this advice will ensure that the services are provided ethically and that the atmosphere in the team is friendly and stimulating for effective work. In general, the ethical requirements are obvious, but the precedent approach that can be seen in the standards allows practitioners to focus on the most frequently made mistakes.
Consequences of Unethical Actions and Behaviors
Since ethical requirements were created more than 70 years ago, they are somewhat outdated in terms of emphasis on preventing racial, ethnic, gender, professional, status, social, and age biases. Modern society is more tolerant compared to the situation 70 years ago. However, tendencies towards biases and prejudices persist, demonstrating historical durability. Unethical and criminal actions that can harm the recipients of services will lead to bad results, including moral and material damage to clients and punishment of employees, and court sentences, which are only short-term consequences. The long-term consequences include the loss of trust in the institution of social services and the professional collapse of unethical workers. More subtle discrepancies should also be considered since people often do not notice their biases due to the constant influence of the external environment, which can lead to personal deformation (Pearce, 2022). Because of this influence, a person can have distorted ideas and values, so changing environments are useful for human service professionals.
Conclusion
Thus, the importance of Ethics for the Human Services Professionals when working with clients and colleagues was explained and the potential consequences of unethical actions and behaviors were discussed. Since human services practitioners provide social services, they must care about the well-being of clients and their interests. Mutual respect and trust must be maintained in relations with colleagues. The consequences of unethical behavior and actions can be very serious, including prison terms and significant harm to service recipients.
Reference
Pearce, E. (2022). Ethics and values in the Human Services. Web.