Discuss the importance of building multicultural and ethical competence. What will you do to ensure that as a counselor you are both multicultural and ethical?

Question

What will be an ideal response?

Answer 1

? It is part of your obligation to make sure that you work in ways that ethically protect the safety of both your clients and yourself.
? An awareness of issues related to dealing with people who might be different from you, and of the ethical principles that guide our profession, are as critical to doing solid counseling work as are self-understanding and a repertoire of skills.
? Your attention to the ethics of good practice, as well as to the worldview people bring to counseling, helps to ensure that no harm will be done.
? Some of the basic assumptions held most sacred by European-American theories about effective counseling fly directly in the face of many non-Western cultural traditions. Some of these assumptions are firmly entrenched in the Western cultural ways of thinking about people, and entrenched as well within the thinking of counselors who have been raised in that tradition.
? Such assumptions, if unchallenged by the unaware counselor, may result in an inability to connect with clients who have different worldviews.
? Adopting a multicultural worldview and learning about ideas related to counseling from such a multicultural perspective are essential for those who want to be effective counselors.