Why is this an ethical dilemma? Which APA Ethical Principles help frame the nature of the dilemma?
Information for Evaluating Trainees
Rashid Vaji, Ph.D., a member of the school psychology faculty at a midsize university,
serves as a faculty supervisor for students assigned to externships in schools. The
department has formalized a supervision and evaluation system for the extern program.
Students have weekly individual meetings with the faculty supervisor and
biweekly meetings with the on-site supervisor. The on-site supervisor writes a midyear
(December) and end of academic year (May) evaluation of each student. The
site evaluations are sent to Dr. Vaji, and he provides feedback based on the site and
his own supervisory evaluation to each student. The final grade (fail, low pass, pass,
high pass) is the responsibility of Dr. Vaji.
Dr. Vaji also teaches the Spring Semester graduate class on “Health Disparities in
Mental Health.” One of the course requirements is for students to write weekly
thought papers, in which they are required to take the perspective of therapy clients
from different ethnic groups in reaction to specific session topics. Leo Watson, a
second-year graduate student is one of Dr. Vaji’s externship supervisees. He is also
enrolled in the Health Disparities course. Leo’s thought papers often present
ethnic-minority adolescents as prone to violence and unable to “grasp” the insights
offered by school psychologists. In a classroom role-playing exercise, Leo “plays” an
ethnic-minority student client as slumping in the chair not understanding the psychologist
and giving angry retorts. In written comments on these thought papers
and class feedback, Dr. Vaji encourages Leo to incorporate more of the readings on
racial/ethnic discrimination and multicultural competence into his papers and to
provide more complex perspectives on clients.
One day during his office hours, three students from the class come to Dr. Vaji’s
office to complain about Leo’s behavior outside the classroom. They describe incidents
in which Leo uses derogatory ethnic labels to describe his externship clients
and brags about “putting one over” on his site supervisors by describing these clients
in “glowing” terms just to satisfy his supervisors’ “stupid liberal do-good”
attitudes. They also report an incident at a local bar at which Leo was seen harassing
an African American waitress using racial slurs.
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Appendix B——365
After the students have left his office, Dr. Vaji reviews his midyear evaluation and
supervision notes on Leo and the midyear on-site supervisor’s report. In his own
evaluation report Dr. Vaji had written, “Leo often articulates a strong sense of duty
to help his ethnic minority students overcome past discrimination but needs additional
growth and supervision in applying a multicultural perspective into his
clinical work.” The on-site supervisor’s evaluation states that
Leo has a wonderful attitude towards his student clients . . . Unfortunately
evaluation of his treatment skills is limited because Leo has had less cases to
discuss than some of his peers since a larger than usual number of students
have stopped coming to their sessions with him.
It is the middle of the Spring Semester, and Dr. Vaji still has approximately 6
weeks of supervision left with Leo. The students’ complaints about Leo, while more
extreme, are consistent with what Dr. Vaji has observed in Leo’s class papers and
role-playing exercises. However, these complaints are very different from his presentation
during on-site supervision. If Leo has been intentionally deceiving both
supervisors, then he may be more ineffective or harmful as a therapist to his current
clients than either supervisor realized. In addition, purposeful attempts to deceive
the supervisors might indicate a personality disorder or lack of integrity that if left
unaddressed might be harmful to adolescent clients in the future.
Ethical Dilemma
Dr. Vaji would like to meet with Leo at minimum to discuss ways to retain adolescent
clients and to improve his multicultural treatment skills. He does not know
to what extent his conversation with Leo and final supervisory report should be
influenced by the information provided by the graduate students.
Discussion Questions
1. Why is this an ethical dilemma? Which APA Ethical Principles help frame the
nature of the dilemma?
2. Who are the stakeholders and how will they be affected by how Dr. Vaji
resolves this dilemma?
3. What additional information might Dr. Vaji collect to provide him with a
more accurate picture of Leo’s multicultural attitudes and professional skills?
What are reasons for and against contacting Leo’s site supervisor for more
information? Should he request that Leo’s sessions with clients be electronically
taped or observed?
4. Is Dr. Vaji in a potentially unethical multiple relationship as both Leo’s
externship supervisor and his teacher in the Health Disparities class. Why or
why not?
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NOT FOR DISTRIBUTION, SALE, OR REPRINTING.
ANY AND ALL UNAUTHORIZED USE IS STRICTLY PROHIBITED.
Copyright © 2013 by SAGE Publications, Inc.
366——DECODING THE ETHICS CODE
5. To what extent, if any, should Dr. Vaji consider Leo’s own ethnicity in his
deliberations? Would the dilemma be addressed differently if Leo self-identified
as non-Hispanic white, Hispanic, or non-Hispanic black?
6. Once the dilemma is resolved, should Dr. Vaji have a follow-up meeting with
the students who complained?
7. How are APA Ethical Standards 1.08, 3.04, 3.05, 3.09, 7.04, 7.05, and 7.06 and
the Hot Topics “Ethical Supervision of Trainees” (Chapter 10) and
“Multicultural Ethical Competence” (Chapter 5) relevant to this case? Which
other standards might apply?
8. What are Dr. Vaji’s ethical alternatives for resolving this dilemma? Which
alternative best reflects the Ethics Code aspirational principles and
enforceable standards, legal standards, and obligations to stakeholders?
Can you identify the ethical theory (discussed in Chapter 3) guiding your
decision?
9. What steps should Dr. Vaji take to implement his decision and monitor its
effect?
Suggested Readings
Allen, J. (2007). A multicultural assessment supervision model to guide research and
practice. Professional Psychology: Research and Practice, 38, 248–258.
Boysen, G. A., & Vogel, D. L. (2008). The relationship between level of training, implicit bias,
and multicultural competency among counselor trainees. Training and Education in
Professional Psychology, 2, 103–110.
Dailor, A. N. (2011). Ethically challenging situations reported by school psychologists:
Implications for training. Psychology in the Schools, 48, 619–631.
Gilfoyle, N. (2008). The legal exosytem: Risk management in addressing student competence
problems in professional psychology training. Training and Education in Professional
Psychology, 2, 202–209.