Ethical Considerations for unorthodox practice - Focus Group
Aleks Jovanovic
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Ethical considerations for unorthodox practice
When we reflect on our engagement practice(s) as CoS, BIS, and COBU practitioners, can we think about the things that we do that stretch the boundaries, practices which might be seen as unorthodox or that might raise eyebrows with agencies such as the NDIA?
These unorthodox practices are not written into our role descriptions, and some of these are sensitive issues, sometimes presenting as dilemmas to us around the familiar topic of boundaries.
A key skill of a good ‘paid’ supporter is developing relationships of trust that are reliable, consistent, and not over-promising. Relationships and trust can be difficult, and practitioners can often face challenges in establishing and maintaining their roles and boundaries.
We are not immune to these ‘difficulties’ at the Jeder Institute. In the NDIS world, we are bound by the NDIS Code of Conduct – one of many regulatory guidelines that set an ethical framework for our work.
I want to initiate an Ethics Focus Group / Jedlet under the Culture Jedi to explore the following:
Our practices might impact on or present tensions to our paid roles and boundaries – essentially, to name some of these practices, as this builds a more realistic picture of what it means to be a paid practitioner and a fellow member at the Jeder Institute.
“The ultimate person-centred approach is arguably to save lives (that want to be saved), and how one gets to that place with some of the most disadvantaged, complex and chaotic individuals may, on occasion, raise the eyebrows of those not directly immersed in this work or engaged in certain relationship dynamics.”
Unusual practice or practice which sits outside of standards and policy.
Examples of practices that may raise eyebrows or which people sense would not be allowed by other agencies:
The time we spend with participants and the time we have to get to know them – Giving too much or too little? Do we set boundaries?
Advocating for clients, particularly around ‘unwise decisions’ – We have examples of paid workers “enabling unhelpful behaviours” in advocating for their participants. Specifically about support on the ‘choices’ participants make to use substances.
The luxury of being able to spend time doing normal things with participants – We have examples of participants saying things like, “I don’t want to talk about my NDIS Goals and my disability; I would rather go out with you and have some fun. How do we approach this in the long run? What is the purpose of our relationship with the participant?
Physical affection towards participants, for example, to greet them or when they are upset: “We decide to be physically affectionate because we have high levels of sympathy for people; perhaps we want them to feel that they belong. Do we need to do that to build trust and progress towards THEIR QOL?
Sharing personal experiences with Participants, “Some of my participants don’t know much about the professionals involved in their lives; they often get told, “you’re not here to talk to me about how I am. I’m here about your life”. This idea that you either don’t share anything or are in danger of becoming a friend is very polarising. How aware are we of the positive/negative outcomes resulting from our actions and commitment?
Working with participants when they are under the influence. Should we say: “they’re not fit for us to work with them?” Can we work with people under the influence? Can the experience still be a positive, a one?
Keeping contact with some clients even after they have moved on (unpaid support). Do we have the emotional capacity for this?
What are our boundaries? Do we set clear expectations/ground rules early!? Are we ready to manage disclosures, past traumas, and clinical support needs? Do we assume accidental counsellor roles? Do we feel competent?
Boundaries concerning encouraging clients to do things that might be out of their comfort zone. When providing advice regarding risk-taking, do we apply a team approach or back ourselves?
These are just a few common examples and apply to our member-to-member relationships. We’ve discovered that boundaries are essential for having healthy relationships. The challenge will be that some of us will say that we are personally very comfortable with some practices, and others will say the same is not necessary. We need to identify our own boundaries within the context of our regulatory and ethical constraints.
We will often apply higher than necessary levels of kindness and generosity only because we cannot think about long-term effects. We have many examples of kindness being used as a short-term solution to problems that we had to “think on our feet”. Often, these short-term solutions may disempower participants and fellow members – in the long run.
Essentially, I would like our focus group to emphasise reflective practice. This means that our members' views on many practice examples are changing and developing, and we establish a space for exploring our practice from an ethical lens, challenging each other’s thinking on our practice and the quality of relationships.
Ethics:
Part of what makes us humans unique is our freedom to determine how we’ll act. Whenever we made a choice, we could have made a different one. [Ethics.org.au]
Values tell us what’s good – they are the things we strive for, desire, and seek to protect
Principles tell us what’s right – outlining how we may or may not achieve our values
The purpose is your reason for being – it gives life to your values and principles
Ethics is the process of questioning, discovering, and defending our values.
Questions to guide our decision-making: 2 Page Poster developed collaboratively in July 2022. See Below.
Related resources:
Decision Making Process/Matrix
Jeder Code of Conduct
NDIS Code of Conduct Policy
Relationships Policy
Alignment with Funding Body expectations and registration commitments.
Compliance and Enforcement policy suite | NDIS Quality and Safeguards Commission (ndiscommission.gov.au)
The NDIS Commission has a range of tools for responding to non-compliance. The overarching Compliance and Enforcement Policy provides a broad overview of our compliance and enforcement functions, strategies and tools. A number of more specific policies have been developed to provide guidance on the NDIS Commission’s approach to the use of particular compliance and enforcement tools. These policies are available on this page and are:
Compliance Notices Policy
Infringement Notice Policy
Enforceable Undertakings Policy
Injunctions Policy
Civil Penalties Policy
Vary, Suspend or Revoke Registration Policy
When: Last Friday of each month
Time: 3pm – 4:30pm
Zoom: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/81476028545?pwd=ZzEzNStOS3g0Z2dEWWdMOEdoVGNkZz09
Meeting ID: 814 7602 8545 Passcode: 802774
Aleks Jovanovic Tue 30 Aug 2022 2:02AM
Ethics UNBOXED Session 9:
Virtue, are you being your best self?
We’ve all heard the common catchphrase (and insta hashtag) ‘living your best life’. Instead, virtue ethics asks us: are you being your best self?
Aleks Jovanovic Tue 30 Aug 2022 2:00AM
Ethics Unboxed Session 8:
Truth, Duty and Deontology
Of the various ethical rules we try to teach children, perhaps the most complicated is around truth telling. https://youtu.be/WoHJhwh4mVQ
Aleks Jovanovic Mon 22 Aug 2022 9:02AM
Ethix Unboxed Session 7:
Do you believe the end justifies the means?
You’ve nailed the basics, learned what ethics is, and how to slow down your decision making. Give yourself a pat on the back (or better yet, high five yourself).
The next few unbox sessions dive into ethical theories. These theories are some of the mainstream ways of talking about ethics within Western philosophy.
Each of them captures something important we should consider when making ethical decisions. Our goal is to help you think about which one you gravitate towards naturally, and to raise some challenges for that particular style. We’re going to kick off with consequentialism.
It’s basically the pros-and-cons-list approach to morality and it does what it says on the box. It asks you to make ethical decisions by thinking about the consequences.
Aleks Jovanovic Mon 22 Aug 2022 9:00AM
Ethics Unboxed Session 6:
Moral imagination and courage
How accurately and effectively we frame our choices comes down to our moral imagination.
So far in this series, we’ve explored ethics in the context of a specific decision: what choice should I make right now? In this session, we’re going to look at what bookends those choices. This is framing.
On the one side, what shapes our sense of the choices we have? How good are we at canvassing the different possible choices available to us? On the other side, we’re looking at how we actually put a choice in effect. There’s a long way between knowing what’s right and doing it.
So how accurately and effectively we frame our choices comes down to our moral imagination – our ability to move past ordinary assumptions, false binaries and cultural norms to create new solutions to old problems. Our ability to actually bring that new solution into being is a question of moral courage. We’re going to look at both.
In the kids film How to Train Your Dragon, we see an excellent example of both. Hiccup is a Viking and the son of the Chieftan of Berk, where the biggest pest they have is dragons. Vikings are trained from a young age to fight and kill dragons. Strength is prized over intelligence, and toughness is a way of life.
Only Hiccup doesn’t fit the mould. Instead of fighting with swords and clubs like the other Vikings, he is an inventor. He devises complex machines to help fight the dragons. For this, he’s seen by his father as a coward and a source of shame.
Until, during one raid, his weapon succeeds in shooting down the most fearsome dragon of all: the Night Fury. Hiccup sees it fall in the woods near town, and sets out to find and slay it, thus proving his worth.
When Hiccup finds the dragon, wounded, he is unable to slay it. His eyes meet the dragons and for the first time in his life, he realises the creature he’s been raised to hate isn’t a monster. It is injured and can no longer fly. When Hiccup threatens it with a knife, it fears death. Hiccup then realises it has an inner life of its own.
Already an imaginative person, Hiccup is able to recognise the flaws in what he’d been taught. Instead of fighting the dragon, he finds a way to work alongside it. He gains the trust of dragon – which he names Toothless – and designs a saddle that enables it to fly, but only with Hiccup riding as well. Human and dragon work together to achieve something neither could apart.
This is the work of moral imagination. It’s a kind of ‘aliveness to the world’. Like an ethical seismograph, its able to sense the various tremors and ethical fault lines around us.
The more well-calibrated, the more sensitive it is to what matters. Hiccup, for instance, is able to perceive that Toothless isn’t just a beast, but a complex creature whose needs and wants matter.
However, Hiccup has trained this dragon in secret. He is still being trained to kill dragons back at Berk, and ultimately has to reveal his secret. When he does, his father rejects him once again, and decides to use Toothless’ power to kill even more dragons.
It’s a friend, Astrid, who encourages Hiccup to see his care for Toothless as empathy and wisdom, not weakness. He and a group of friends all ride dragons to save Toothless and the day. In the end, his father recognises that he was wrong, and the whole of Berk embraces dragons.
This is a case study in courage. Not only does Hiccup find the courage to challenge his father’s deeply-held beliefs about dragons (he believes a dragon killed his wife and Hiccup’s mother), he then continues to defend Toothless, despite the obvious risk it poses to him. Note though, that he doesn’t do this alone. He needs Astrid’s encouragement to remind him that his beliefs are worth defending.
There’s a wonderful symmetry between Hiccup’s imagination and his courage. The potential for him to be imaginative and brave is there, but what brings it into being is his connection to other people. It’s in the face-to-face connection with those around him that he recognises and is able to act on the most morally important pieces of the picture.
Of course, there are times when Hiccup’s imagination and courage fail him too – and that’s perfectly understandable because this stuff is hard. Aristotle, the ancient Greek philosopher who has his finger in a lot of ethical pies even today, had a concept he called ‘weakness of will’ (akrasia).
Believe it or not, Aristotle actually drew an analogy here between slipping up ethically and incontinence. He believed most of us have an ethically leaky bladder at times – and that a lot of ethics work is basically like toilet training. We practice and prepare, so that we’re able to hold fast, just when we think everything’s going to burst.
SELF-REFLECTION QUESTIONS
Do you ever find yourself pretending a choice is really complex when actually, deep down inside, you know what the right thing to do is? We often use complexity as a way of avoiding uncomfortable choices. What discomforts are you most sensitive to? Is it fearing conflict? Admitting you made a mistake? Something else?
Are there some people in your life who help you to feel courage, or who help you see things more clearly? Who are they? What are they doing to help you?
So often, our interactions are now mediated by technology. It’s harder to actually engage with people in a face-to-face encounter. Do you think this is a challenge for our moral imagination? What could you do when you’re online to help remember the full humanity of the people you’re interacting with?
It’s often easier to make decisions if we pretend they’re simpler than they are. Unfortunately, it’s also unimaginative. For instance, we might choose ‘not to know’ about the environmental issues involved in fast fashion. Or ignore the creatives who are losing money because we’re pirating their TV show because they’ll never meet us. What hard, uncomfortable realities are you choosing to look away from? (Don’t be too harsh on yourself – most of us do it)
Aleks Jovanovic Mon 22 Aug 2022 11:49PM
Me too Dee. Some say that when these two are aligned well, the result is called 'wisdom'.
Dee Brooks Mon 22 Aug 2022 9:14PM
This one interest me greatly; aligning emotion and reason!
Great topic for discussion! (in fact, these all are, loving them, Aleks)
Aleks Jovanovic Mon 22 Aug 2022 8:58AM
Fine-tuning your intuition and judgement
If you want to seem really wise in the Star Wars universe, just say something about feelings.
“Feel, don’t think – use your instincts”, “search your feelings, you know this to be true”, “your eyes can deceive you, don’t trust them. Stretch out with your feelings.” … You get the gist.
The thing is, all the people who spout these quotes came from the Jedi Order – a group of spiritual peacekeepers whose self-confidence ultimately led to their complete demise. Overconfidence and an unearned sense of self-righteousness by a group of wise, intuitive leaders condemned the galaxy.
Alongside the battles between good and evil, the hero’s journey and a fandom that sometimes borders on madness, Star Wars gives us a nice metaphor for the complexities of moral judgement. The Jedi embrace our tendency to ‘sense’ a correct way through difficult situations and to ‘feel’ what’s right without needing to make a logical argument for why that’s the case.
Still, when we rely exclusively on our instinct and intuition, we risk investing too heavily in something we don’t understand. After all, our intuitions can come from a basic, innate understanding of right and wrong. But they can also come from our personal history, unconscious bias (remember them from our last unboxing?) or fail to guide us in situations of ambiguity or complexity.
This is why many philosophers have advised against instinct and intuition as a guide to decision making. We should think, not feel, and if our conclusions contradict our instincts, we should follow the argument wherever it leads. When it comes to choosing with our head or our heart, we should always listen to our head.
But maybe these philosophers have missed something. We often criticise moral decisions because they are ‘heartless’, ‘cold’ or ‘calculating’. We shouldn’t be so preoccupied with logicking our way through difficult decisions that we become computers. In the battle of heads and hearts, perhaps the Old El Paso school of thought is best – ‘¿por que no los dos?’
The Ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle painted a picture of an uber ethical decision-maker, which he called the phronimos. This person was a master of the virtue of practical wisdom. The phronimos doesn’t just make the right judgements, they also feel he appropriate emotions. In situations demanding mercy, they feel merciful. When anger is required, they get angry. For the phronimos, emotion and reason aren’t two rival forces, they co-operate to help inform and drive excellent decision making, quickly.
From the outside, this person looks like they’ve got Jedi-like moral instincts. In reality, they’re so well-practised at ethical decision making that they can reason both quickly, and well.
Most of us tend not to immediately have a healthy balance of head and heart. We tend to default either to ‘thinking’ or ‘feeling’ when time gets rough. And we look for our own tribe. If we’re feelers, we look for the support of fellow feelers – seeing thinkers as callous, cold-hearted and insensitive. If we’re ‘thinkers’, we see feelers as irrational, impulsive and in need of a cold shower.
Understanding that these two approaches aren’t competing to the One Right Source of Good Decisions, but are both tapping into different strengths, we can find ways of drawing on both instead of turning on each other. And we can seek to cultivate both tendencies within ourselves.
SELF-REFLECTION QUESTIONS
Do you tend to be a ‘thinker’ or a ‘feeler’ when it comes to big decisions? Can you think of some situation where that tendency has gone well for you? What about a time it went badly?
Think of someone who irritates you with how much they feel (if you’re a thinker) or how much they think (if you’re a feeler). What does this style of theirs help them accomplish? Which parts of your life can their style help you with?
What do you think you would do if thinking about a problem led you to a conclusion that conflicted with what you felt was right? What about the reverse, if logical analysis led you to conclude that something that disgusted or offended you was actually fine?
Practical wisdom is a virtue that develops over time. Think about some choices you remember struggling with from a long time ago. Looking at them now, do they seem more or less difficult to you? Do you feel differently about them? What does that tell you?
When you’re not sure what’s going on, does your imagination run wild, telling you stories about what someone is thinking or what they might have done? How helpful do you think those stories you tell yourself are? Should you act on them?
If tomorrow you felt a flood of immediate, strong judgement about something that happened, what’s one thing you could do to put that judgement under the microscope and double-check its accuracy?
Aleks Jovanovic Sat 13 Aug 2022 4:04AM
Session # 4 from Ethics.org.au
Biases. The sneaky foxes that can lead you astray.
Remember the internet dress saga of 2015? Black and blue or black and gold? Everyone saw it differently and each was adamant that their way was the only way to see.
You’d be surprised how many judgements we make that work just the same way. Our unconscious brain grabs the wheel and primes our judgements before we’ve had a second to think about it. That’s why we need to know about unconscious bias.
Aleks Jovanovic Sat 13 Aug 2022 4:02AM
Ethics Unboxed Session #3
Ethical Decision Making
Think about the last time you made a big decision. What made you make that choice? Why did you pick one way rather than any of the other options available to you?
Writing in the wake of the Holocaust, Jewish philosopher Hannah Arendt spent a large portion of her career devoted to the idea of thinking, and what constitutes genuine thinking. For Arendt, this was a crucial question because she believed an inability to think could sit at the heart of humanity’s deepest evils.
Arendt witnessed first-hand the testimony of Nazi war criminals being tried for their crimes. What she found remarkable was that far from being monstrous or demonic, the most notable feature of these men was a striking inability to think. She wrote:
“However monstrous the deeds were, the doer was neither monstrous nor demonic, and the only specific characteristic… was something entirely negative: it was not stupidity but a curious, quite authentic inability to think.”
Arendt argued that most of what passes for thinking today really isn’t. Lots of what we think is actually the result of intellectual laziness. We rely on ‘common sense’, or ‘what’s always been done’. We inherit the values, politics and opinions of our nearest and dearest. We’re outraged by whatever our peers online are outraged by. We feel strongly what’s right without doing the harder, less sexy work of thinking those matters through.
That’s precisely what ethics requires us to do though. We don’t just follow rules or do what we’re told (remember what happened when people “followed orders”). We have to look at the choices that face us and understand the underlying issues and concepts and how they apply to the situation we’re in.
It is entirely possible for all of us to do this well. But it’s also thoroughly normal to do it poorly. That should worry us. Arendt famously coined the term ‘the banality of evil’ to explain how unspeakable evil could be facilitated by thoroughly boring deeds by thoroughly normal people. When we think today about growing wealth inequality, climate change and the other challenges of our time, it’s hard to disagree.
Aleks Jovanovic · Wed 20 Mar 2024 1:27AM
Moving this topic towards the surface :). I am just letting everyone (especially the newer members) know that we developed our Ethical Considerations Policy: https://jedercomau.sharepoint.com/:w:/s/Jeder-Members/ERrWoSiOgR5BnfQkOEjJA2kBrArSJohGphxaURoeHNS6NQ?e=pr35hJ