Ethical decision-making: effects of ethical self-efficacy and uncertainty

For counselors, the welfare of clients and the protection of the community are grounded in comprehension and implementation of ethical principles in practice. Counselors face increasing ethics complexity as organizational and political influences conflict with client’s self-interest. Two thought-experiments involving a Tarasoff-like dilemma were used to explore factors related to ethical decision-making by clinicians in definitive and ambiguous duty-to-warn situations. Outcomes demonstrated that legal, moral, and social factors influenced ethical decision-making in a non-probability sample of 221 U.S. counselors who participated in the thought-experiment study. Increasing ethical uncertainty was related to a decrease in direct action, stronger influence of moral and social factors, and the stronger influence of ethical self-efficacy on decision-making. This study bridges the cognitive model of moral reasoning and social cognitive theory, extending the concept of agency into the ethical domain and suggesting refinements to moral reasoning models. Implications are discussed.