ABSTRACT

In the unregulated coaching and mentoring industry, this chapter highlights the importance of personal ethics and the choices we make either consciously or unconsciously with our clients. Ethics is defined as part of who we are as human beings and individuals and is therefore always present in coaching and mentoring practice – in other words, ethics is “the elephant in the room”. By understanding this concept and exploring how ethics provides an internal moral compass, a practitioner can better understand the choices they make.

This chapter discusses the emphasis of coaches and mentors being judgment free perpetuated by both the professional bodies and training organizations, which in turn create the blind spot often not recognized by practitioners – that their elephant (the practitioner’s ethics) is present in the client engagement.

The chapter includes ways to better identify their elephant earlier, through discussing ethics in peer or professional supervision such as negotiating the terms and conditions in the Contract, misrepresentation, collusion, competence, bias and the importance of self-care. By the end of this chapter, practitioners will have a defined understanding of the choice points to navigate ethics.