Ethical Maturity in the Helping Professions

Michael Carroll is a fellow of the British Association for Counselling, a chartered counselling psychologist, and an accredited Executive Coach and Executive Coach Supervisor. He works as a coach, supervisor, trainer and consultant to organisations in both the public and private sectors specialising in the area of employee well-being. He has published widely in the areas of workplace counselling and counselling supervision. He is co-editor of Integrative Approaches to Supervision also published by Jessica Kingsley Publishers. He currently resides in Somerset, UK. Elisabeth Shaw is a counselling psychologist, couple and family therapist, who also provides clinical supervision and management development across diverse professional groups. She has had over 15 years of experience in the field of ethics and philosophy and currently consults at the St James Ethics Centre, Sydney, as well as being a member of a number of industry based ethics committees. She has published work in the fields of relationship therapy, supervision and ethics. She currently resides in Sydney, Australia.

• Acknowledgements. Foreword by Professor Tim Bond. Preface. Introduction. Overview of the book. Part One. The Foundations of Ethical Maturity: History, Philosophy and Science. 1. Setting the Scene: The moral landscape 2. Ethical maturity and unethical behaviour. 3. A very, very short story of ethics. 4. Socrates and Aristotle: Moral character and moral action. 5. The brain and ethics. 6. Relational ethics 7. What is ethical maturity? Part Two. The Six components of ethical maturity. 8. Component 1: Creating ethical ethical sensitivity and mindfulness. 9. Component 2: The process of ethical decision making. 10. Component 2: Maximising choices: Free will, accountability and responsibility. 11. Component 2: Conscious ethical discernment and decision making. 12. Component 2: The influence of the unconscious on ethical decision making. 13. Component 3: Implementing ethical decisions. 14. Component 4: Ethical accountability and moral defence. 15. Component 5: Ethical sustainability and peace. 16. Component 6: Learning from experience and integrating new learning into moral character. 17. Training in ethical maturity. Part Three. Applied ethical maturity in challenging contexts. 18. Organisations, contexts, ethics and maturity. 19. Bought and sold: The ethics of gifts. 20. The ethics of research: Enhancing knowledge and being ethically mature by Professor Tim Bond. 21. And finally… References

GO AND BUY THIS BOOK: you need to read it. And then read it again... we are treated to a wonderfully engaging insight into the work of Socrates and Aristotle, with the former attempting to define the constituents of the 'good, (ethically mature), life' and the latter being concerned with moral character... a wonderfully researched and authoritively written account of a range of ways in which poor/dangerous practice can be made much more, or less, likely to occur... They also raise fascinating issues concerning how to learn to be more ethically sensitive, (Chapter 8), and what/how training courses might best teach on the topic (Chapter 17)... this book is an absolute treasure trove of knowledge and full of prompts for reflecting on and stretching ones practice... I whole heartedly applaud Carroll and Shaw for framing this hugely important conversation and outlining a process for engaging in it.