I was wondering what kind of dilemmas my colleagues had. I could find books about potential dilemmas but I wanted to find out what the actual dilemmas were. So my curiosity led me to partner with the EMCC Global and design the survey on "Ethical Dilemmas in Coaching Today". The "Today" was important to me because dilemmas change over time together with our societies, our needs and our world.

The reason for launching the survey was that I wanted answers to some questions that were in my mind as a coach. There were my dilemmas that needed answers. I discovered that every professional dilemma is in fact an ethical dilemma because it entails a decision which is shaped by various factors in every situation and every different context.

Thinking in more depth about dilemmas, ethics, ethical codes and practice I have decided that the more we reflect on our practice the more dilemmas surface. I am satisfied that I found out other coaches' dilemmas.

We’re delighted to present Maria’s key findings of the survey as the Senior Researcher on Ethics for the EMCC.

SURVEY TITLE: EMCC Global coaching professional dilemmas survey

ETHICAL DILEMMAS IN COACHING TODAY

Prepared by: Maria Biquet, Senior Practitioner EMCC, Senior Researcher on Ethics

Executive Summary

There is a lot of documentation about dilemmas in coaching. Dilemmas could be ethical or professional; they are the proof that we can still question the world around us, our work and capabilities, and our own thinking. The ways in which we address them can be the basis of our evolution as professionals, citizens, and human beings.

Dilemmas may change over time. In order to further evolve it is essential to know what these dilemmas are for practitioners around the globe today. This survey was designed to investigate the subject and explore current dilemmas of coaches.

In this survey we ask about: real ethical dilemmas that coaching professionals have had in the last 12 months related to their competence to handle specific cases, financial impact or implications posed by the dilemma, their own ethics and values compared to the client's ethics and values in managing the client's dilemma and others. How often coaches have dilemmas and what they recognise as a dilemma; we asked what categories of dilemmas coaches have and how they deal with them.

The survey run in two phases: a. semi-structured interviews, b. online questionnaire

The results presented in this report refer to the quantitative phase (b).

Key results of the survey:

• 343 coaches (of 353 total) participants fully completed the survey.

• Mainly EMCC members (87.6% including membership to EMCC and other organisations) from 46 countries participated in the online survey.

• 87% are over 45 years old, of which 34.3% men and 64.9% women

• 71% of participants have a Masters or PhD

• 41.1% of the respondents agreed with the first definition or a dilemma: “A situation in which a difficult choice has to be made between two courses of action, either of which entails transgressing a moral principle”

• 36.7% prefer the second definition: “A difficult situation or problem with a client that I face in my professional practice”.

• 7.3% of the respondents declare that they never had a dilemma in their coaching practice while 28% had a dilemma in the last month and 31.5% in the last six months

• 72% had 1-4 dilemmas in the last 12 months and 15.7% didn’t have any dilemmas in the same period

• The participants were asked to choose up to three of their most recent dilemmas:

“managing own weaknesses” 39.6%,

“conflicting interests between sponsor and coachee” 33.2%

“Working with a client who diverts from the goals that have been agreed with their sponsoring organization” 30%

“Confidentiality issues in the organisational environment” 26.8%

“Managing boundaries of the coaching profession” 25.9%

“Managing relations in an organization” 24.7%

• The main root cause of dilemmas they declared is “Clash between my value system and the value system of my client” by 42%

• The biggest risks of a wrong decision in handling a dilemma are: “losing trust with the coachee or the sponsor” 47.8%, “doing harm to the client’s development” 42.2% and “damage of my credibility as a professional” 40.2%

• Participants’ solution to handle dilemmas are “supervision” as first choice 72.3%, “reflection on the issue” 62.9% and lower in the list of preference are “recontracting with the client” 45.4% and “discussion with trusted colleagues” 42.2%.

• 9.5% of participants declared that if they faced a dilemma again they would discuss it at supervision.

Conclusions

Coaches have dilemmas about their own weaknesses, conflicting interests, their clients’ changing goals, confidentiality and others which they prefer to manage with the support of supervision.

Dilemmas slightly differ between the genders and experience and seems that there is an almost steady percentage of people who never have dilemmas.

Coaches who deliver more than 120 hours coaching per year declare more dilemmas than coaches with less hours. In that category 3.4% had zero dilemmas.

Experience seems not to affect frequency of dilemmas; coaches with more than 10 years’ experience still have similar percentage of dilemmas.

The type of dilemmas changes significantly over time; experienced coaches have different dilemmas from novice ones. Also, there are differences between the genders in the predominant dilemmas.

Clash of values between the coach and the coachee is the most common source of a dilemma.

Supervision is the first choice of coaches to deal with dilemmas; while reflection and discussion with trusted colleagues are preferred options too.

The Global Code of Ethics is a source of information for a number of coaches but still not first choice.

To find out more details of how to order your copy, go to the EMCC Bookstore.

Read other blog-articles by Maria Biquet here, and connect with her via Linkedin

Maria Biquet is an experienced multilingual Business Consultant and Executive Coach with vast experience from diverse business fields, such as Banking & Financing, Automotive, Telecommunications and Education.

Maria has long experience in Strategic Marketing and in establishing companies in new markets. For more than 20 years she has studied and practiced various methodologies for People Development and Organisational Change including Neuroscience in Coaching, Systemic approach, Appreciative Inquiry Approach.

She holds a Bachelors in Language & Linguistics, an MBA-International Marketing from Sunderland University UK and is a Neurocoach certified by the NBG – Harvard School and a Master Coach certified by the CAC.

Vice President of Marketing & Communications of HCA (Hellenic Coaching Association) EMCC Greece, Senior Researcher on Ethics at EMCC (European Mentoring & Coaching Council) - “the actual Ethical Dilemmas in Coaching today”.

EMCC Accredited Senior Practitioner Coach

Works in Greek, English and French.