Section 1 Values and Ethics

Ethical Principles and Responsibilities

20 min read · Lesson 1 of 4

The Ground You Stand On

Most of the hard moments in social work are not about not knowing the rules. They are about two right answers pulling in opposite directions. A client wants something that may hurt him. A family asks you to keep a secret you are not sure you can keep. A policy says one thing and the person in front of you needs another. The work of ethics is learning to stand in that tension without freezing, and the profession has spent a century building you tools for exactly that.

Two documents anchor those tools: the NASW Code of Ethics in the United States and the CASW Code of Ethics in Canada. They are not a manual you reach for only when something has already gone wrong. They put language to the values you are practicing from inside every session, and they give you common footing with every other social worker who has sat where you are sitting. The six core values below are the floor everything else is built on. The exam will rarely ask you to recite them. It drops you into a situation and asks which value should carry the day, so it helps to learn them less as a list to memorize and more as a set of instincts you can feel competing.

Mission-driven
Relationship
Professional conduct
Service
Core value
Helping people in need and addressing social problems is the primary mission
Social justice
Core value
Challenging injustice on behalf of vulnerable and oppressed populations
Dignity and worth
Self-determination
Treating every individual with respect — the source of self-determination rights
Human relationships
Vehicle for change
Relationships between people are the most important vehicle for change and growth
Integrity
Professional conduct
Behaving in a trustworthy manner and acting consistently with professional values
Competence
Professional conduct
Practicing within areas of expertise and continually developing professional skills
Self-determination is the default, not the reward: Clients have the right to make their own choices, including choices you disagree with. That right stands until a client poses a serious, foreseeable, and imminent risk to themselves or someone else. Notice the order. You begin from the client's right to choose and you limit it only when that high bar is cleared, never the other way around.
Concept Check

Which of the six core social work values directs the practitioner to behave in a trustworthy manner?

(Cognitive Level: Recall) Integrity is the core value that explicitly addresses trustworthy professional conduct. The NASW Code of Ethics frames integrity around acting honestly, taking responsibility for one's actions, and avoiding behavior that misleads clients or damages professional relationships. Dignity and worth concerns respect for the inherent value of each person; importance of human relationships frames relationships as a vehicle for change; competence requires practicing within one's expertise. The six core values overlap in practice but each carries a distinct ethical anchor.
Concept Check

When asked to provide therapy in a clinical area where the worker has limited training, the social worker's MOST ethical course of action is to:

(Cognitive Level: Application) The MOST ethical course is to pursue training or supervision to develop competence before taking the case. The competence value expects practitioners to grow their scope of practice through proper preparation. Providing services while only self-studying risks substandard care. Declining without exploring competence-building leaves the client without service when growth was possible. Waiting until problems arise violates the proactive standard of competence the Code requires.
Concept Check

Client self-determination is MOST directly grounded in which core social work value?

(Cognitive Level: Recall) The MOST direct grounding of client self-determination is dignity and worth of the person, which recognizes each individual's inherent capacity to make decisions about their own life. Service concerns addressing client needs but does not anchor decision-making rights. Competence concerns the practitioner's skills, not the client's autonomy. All six values support self-determination indirectly, but dignity and worth is the explicit foundation in the Code of Ethics.

How You Actually Decide

Knowing the values is one thing. Knowing what to do at four o'clock on a Friday when two of them collide is another. This is where a decision model earns its keep. It does not make the choice for you, but it slows you down at the exact moment you are most tempted to act on instinct, and it leaves you with a path you can explain afterward to a supervisor, a board, or yourself. Walk the steps below in order. The exam consistently rewards the worker who deliberates before acting.

1
Identify the ethical issue
Which values or obligations are in conflict?
Self-determination vs. safety Confidentiality vs. duty to warn
2
Consult the Code of Ethics
Does the NASW Code address this situation?
Check specific standards Review core values
3
Review relevant laws and regulations
Legal obligations may override ethical preferences
Mandatory reporting laws Tarasoff / duty to warn
4
Seek consultation
Never decide alone on complex ethical issues
Supervisor Ethics committee Colleagues
5
Consider possible courses of action
Weigh benefits and risks of each option
Who is affected? What are the consequences?
6
Make the decision and document
Include your reasoning in the record
Document rationale Follow up on outcomes

On the exam, the best answer almost always involves consulting the Code of Ethics and seeking supervision before taking action, not acting on gut instinct alone.

When a question asks what a social worker should do FIRST in an ethical dilemma, the answer is almost never to take immediate action. Look instead for the option that consults the Code of Ethics, seeks supervision, or names the competing values out loud. On this exam, thinking is doing. Action comes after deliberation.
Concept Check

A social worker is uncertain whether to share specific information about a client with a family member who has been actively involved in the client's care. Following the ethical decision-making model, the social worker should FIRST:

(Cognitive Level: Application) The FIRST step in any ethical decision-making model is to identify the ethical issue itself: which values or obligations are in conflict. In this scenario, the worker is balancing confidentiality against family inclusion in care but cannot resolve the conflict before naming it. Consulting supervision and reviewing records are valuable steps that come later in the model. Acting on the family member's request without analysis bypasses the deliberative process the model exists to support.

Boundaries

If the decision model is how you think, boundaries are how you protect the relationship while you think. Boundary questions are among the most heavily tested on the exam, and for good reason: they are where good intentions quietly go wrong. The line is rarely obvious in the moment, so it helps to picture it as two sides, what keeps the relationship safely professional and what slowly erodes it. The split below sorts the situations you will most often be asked to judge.

Always prohibited
No exceptions
Sexual relationships with current clients
Sexual relationships with former clients (defined period)
Self-disclosure for the worker's own needs
May be acceptable
With careful consideration
Dual relationships when risk of harm is low
Bartering if client-initiated and non-exploitative
Self-disclosure when it serves the client's goals
A trap worth recognizing: A former client reaches out after termination hoping for a personal relationship. The tempting wrong answers are to ignore the message, to rush straight to a supervisor, or to agree because services have ended. The first move is to explain the ethical standard to the client, kindly and plainly. Consulting a supervisor may well follow, but the exam wants to see you name the boundary first.
Concept Check

A former client whom the worker last served three months ago approaches the social worker during a chance encounter at a coffee shop and asks for informal advice about a recent decision. The BEST response is to:

(Cognitive Level: Reasoning) The BEST response is brief, respectful, and redirects the former client to a current provider for ongoing support. Chance encounters do not require avoidance, but the worker is responsible for maintaining the post-termination boundary by not resuming a clinical role. Refusing to engage entirely feels dismissive of a human moment. Scheduling an appointment re-initiates services that had been terminated. Offering ongoing informal consultation creates an unsanctioned dual relationship and clinical liability outside any documentation framework.
Concept Check

Six months after services have ended, a former client sends the social worker a message expressing romantic interest. The social worker's BEST response is to:

(Cognitive Level: Reasoning) The BEST response is to respond directly and explain the ethical standard that prohibits sexual or romantic relationships with former clients for a defined period. Ignoring the message is unprofessional and may leave the former client confused. Consulting supervision is appropriate when uncertainty exists, but the standard here is unambiguous in the Code. Scheduling a meeting suggests the request is open for discussion, which it is not. The social worker is responsible for clear, immediate boundary maintenance.

When a Client Says No

Self-determination stays comfortably abstract until a competent adult refuses the treatment that is keeping him alive and you are the person sitting with him. This is where the principle becomes real. A client can decline any service offered, including medication, medical treatment, counseling, and placement, and that refusal holds even when you are certain the service would help.

What changes from one client to the next is not the right itself but who is entitled to exercise it:

  • Competent adults can refuse anything, up to and including life-saving care, and your job is to honor the decision rather than override it.
  • Minors usually cannot refuse services on their own, though their preferences carry more weight as they mature and should be taken seriously.
  • Clients a court has declared incompetent have a legally authorized representative who decides on their behalf.
  • Even involuntary or mandated clients keep certain rights, including the right to refuse specific interventions inside the larger mandate.

Your role when someone refuses is narrow and important: make sure the refusal is informed. You explain what is likely to happen, you confirm the person understands, and then you respect the answer. Talking a client out of a competent decision is not support. It is a boundary violation wearing the costume of care.

Concept Check

A hospital patient with mild cognitive impairment declines an assisted living placement and asks the social worker not to discuss the matter with the patient's adult children. The BEST action is to:

(Cognitive Level: Application) The BEST action is to honor self-determination by exploring community services that could support the patient's stated preference to remain independent. Mild cognitive impairment does not by itself remove decision-making capacity; the patient retains the right to refuse placement and the right to confidentiality. APS reporting requires reasonable suspicion of abuse, neglect, or self-neglect that meets statutory criteria. Contacting the children against the patient's explicit request would violate confidentiality without justification.

End of Life

That same respect for a client's wishes gets its hardest test at the end of life, where the stakes are final and the family is often in the room. End-of-life work asks you to hold a clear ethical line while the people around you are grieving in real time. A handful of concepts surface again and again:

  • Advance directives are legal documents that record what a person wants if they can no longer speak for themselves, such as a living will or a healthcare power of attorney.
  • A Do Not Resuscitate (DNR) order is a medical order you should understand and respect, but it is not yours to initiate or to override.
  • Where medical aid in dying is legal, your role is to confirm the choice is informed, voluntary, and free of coercion, not to steer it.
  • Culture shapes all of this: rituals around death, beliefs about an afterlife, and attitudes toward medical intervention vary widely, and the respectful worker asks rather than assumes.
  • When family members disagree about care, you advocate for what the client expressed, with the advance directive as your anchor.
When a question involves a terminally ill client, the right answer almost always puts the client's own expressed wishes ahead of family preferences, medical advice, or your personal beliefs. If an advance directive exists, it governs, even when the family disagrees with it.
Concept Check

A terminally ill client's advance directive specifies no aggressive resuscitation efforts. The client's adult children insist that full medical intervention be provided if the client deteriorates. The social worker's MOST appropriate role is to:

(Cognitive Level: Reasoning) The MOST appropriate role is to advocate for the client's documented wishes while supporting the family through their grief. The advance directive governs the client's care; the worker's ethical obligation is to the client, not to family preferences. Honoring family wishes against the directive would violate self-determination at end of life. Ethics committee referral may follow if a legal challenge emerges but is not the first response. The directive supersedes informal consensus-building among family members.

How Much of Yourself to Share

Boundaries are not only about what you refuse. They are also about what you reveal. Self-disclosure, the deliberate sharing of something personal with a client, is one of the most nuanced judgments you will make, and the exam returns to it precisely because the answer is never a simple yes or no. The test is always the same: whose need does this serve?

  • Helpful disclosure serves the client, for instance briefly naming a relevant experience to normalize what they feel or to build trust.
  • Unhelpful disclosure serves you, pulls the focus onto your own story, or hands the client something to carry.
  • Good disclosure is brief, purposeful, and relevant, and you weigh whether it will actually move the work forward before you offer it.
  • Culture changes the calculation too: in some communities a little openness from the provider earns trust, while in others it reads as unprofessional.
Concept Check

During a session, a client struggling with divorce asks the social worker whether the worker has ever been divorced. The social worker has in fact been through a divorce. The MOST appropriate response is to:

(Cognitive Level: Application) The MOST appropriate response is brief, purposeful self-disclosure that normalizes the client's experience and refocuses on the client's feelings. Appropriate self-disclosure is brief, purposeful, and serves the client, not the practitioner. Sharing in detail shifts focus to the worker's life and creates a burden on the client. Flatly telling the client that personal questions are inappropriate damages rapport and dismisses a genuine attempt at connection. The skill is to acknowledge warmly and return to the client's process.

Ethics in Research

Sooner or later the work turns to evidence, and the moment a social worker studies people rather than only serving them, a second set of protections kicks in. The principles below exist because research has, in its history, harmed the very people it claimed to help, and the profession is determined not to repeat that:

  • An Institutional Review Board (IRB) must review and approve any study involving human subjects before a single data point is collected.
  • Informed consent means participants understand the purpose, the procedures, the risks and benefits, and their freedom to withdraw at any time without penalty.
  • Participation is voluntary. No one is coerced, and a client who declines to join a study never loses the services they were already receiving.
  • Anonymity and confidentiality are not the same thing. Anonymity means even the researcher cannot link data to a person. Confidentiality means the researcher can but will not.
  • Vulnerable populations, including children, prisoners, pregnant women, and people with cognitive impairments, receive extra protection.
  • The work must do no harm. Risks are minimized, benefits maximized, and if harm surfaces mid-study the researcher acts to correct it.
Concept Check

A research proposal to study the effectiveness of a new group therapy intervention with adolescents at a residential facility requires the social worker to FIRST:

(Cognitive Level: Recall) The FIRST step is to submit the proposal to an Institutional Review Board. All research involving human subjects requires IRB approval before any data collection, recruitment, or intervention begins. Informed consent is also required but follows IRB approval, not precedes it. A pilot study still constitutes research and cannot begin without IRB review. Literature review is essential preparation but does not satisfy the regulatory requirement. Adolescents are a protected population, making IRB oversight even more strictly required.

Staying Competent, Licensed, and Safe

Competence is a value, but it is also a system of rules, and the exam expects you to know the scaffolding that keeps you credentialed and inside your bounds:

  • The Council on Social Work Education (CSWE) accredits social work programs in the United States, and a degree from a CSWE-accredited program is typically required to be licensed.
  • State licensing boards decide eligibility, issue licenses, handle renewals, and investigate complaints.
  • ASWB examinations, the ones you are preparing for right now, are used by nearly every U.S. state and Canadian province as part of licensure.
  • Continuing education keeps a license current in most jurisdictions, with the specifics varying by state.
  • Scope of practice defines what your license level authorizes you to do, and working beyond it is both an ethical and a legal violation.
  • Supervision bridges school and independent practice: pre-licensure workers complete supervised hours, and the supervisor carries responsibility for the supervisee's practice.
Your own safety is an ethical issue too: Agencies are obligated to build, run, and review policies that protect workers from physical and emotional harm, from home-visit safety protocols and de-escalation training to supervision that helps you carry vicarious trauma. The responsibility runs both ways. When you encounter unsafe working conditions, you are expected to report them.

Keeping Yourself Out of the Way

For all the talk of partnership, the social worker and client never meet as equals. You hold institutional power, specialized knowledge, and often the keys to the resources the client needs. Ethical practice means staying awake to that imbalance rather than pretending it away:

  • Be transparent about your role, what you can and cannot do, and how decisions get made.
  • Share the decisions. Treat clients as partners in the work, not as passive recipients of it.
  • Protect your objectivity. Keep the ability to see a situation clearly without being swept along by personal feeling, countertransference, or outside pressure.
  • Know your own values. Your background, beliefs, and blind spots can tilt a clinical judgment without your noticing, which is why self-reflection and supervision are not optional extras but safeguards.
Concept Check

A social worker finds that personal religious beliefs conflict with a client's life choices. After supervision and self-reflection, the worker remains unable to set the conflict aside. The MOST appropriate next action is to:

(Cognitive Level: Reasoning) The MOST appropriate next action is referral to a provider who can offer competent service without the values conflict. The Code requires social workers to recognize when personal issues interfere with practice and take corrective action. Continuing while avoiding the topic fails the client because unresolved bias leaks into clinical judgments. Sharing the beliefs imposes the worker's worldview and undermines self-determination. Referral after exhausting supervision is not avoidance; it acts on the limit of competence the Code requires the worker to acknowledge.
When the problem is a colleague: You also have a duty when someone you work alongside is impaired. If a colleague's substance use, mental health, or personal crisis starts bleeding into their professional functioning, the first step is usually a direct, private conversation with that colleague. If that does not resolve it, or if clients are at risk, you are obligated to report to the appropriate authority, which may be the licensing board, the employer, or a professional ethics committee.
Concept Check

Learning that a colleague has been practicing outside the colleague's area of competence, the social worker should FIRST:

(Cognitive Level: Application) The Code of Ethics directs the social worker to FIRST address concerns about a colleague's competence informally and directly with the colleague when possible. Reporting to the licensing board is appropriate only after informal resolution fails or if clients are in immediate danger. Informing the colleague's clients would be both premature and a confidentiality violation. Documenting without acting does not fulfill the ethical obligation to address incompetent practice. The standard reflects a graduated response: direct conversation first, escalation only as needed.

Put it to Work

You have the values, the decision model, and the boundaries. The only way to know whether they have moved from the page into your instincts is to use them under a little pressure. Work the scenario below the way you would a real case: read for the competing values first, resist the urge to jump to action, and choose the response you could defend out loud.

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