ACT Ethics & Professional Standards 3 — Questions and Answers
Question 1: An ACT consultant is asked to train organizational staff in ACT-based resilience. Before proceeding, the most critical ethical consideration is:
- Whether the consultant prefers group or individual formats
- Confirming scope of practice and organizational informed consent for staff participants (Correct answer)
- Ensuring the program is revenue-generating
- Obtaining a peer-reviewed endorsement of the curriculum
Correct answer: Confirming scope of practice and organizational informed consent for staff participants
Consultants must operate within their scope of practice and ensure participants understand the nature, limits, and purpose of the training.
Question 2: When ACT is delivered via telehealth across state lines, the therapist must first address:
- Client preference for in-person versus virtual sessions
- Licensure requirements in the client's state of residence (Correct answer)
- Whether the internet connection is sufficiently fast
- Insurance reimbursement rates for telehealth
Correct answer: Licensure requirements in the client's state of residence
Practice across state lines requires verifying licensure eligibility in the jurisdiction where the client is physically located.
Question 3: A trainee ACT therapist consistently avoids experiential exercises because they find them personally uncomfortable. This most likely reflects:
- An evidence-based preference for verbal interventions
- Experiential avoidance that could compromise treatment fidelity and client outcomes (Correct answer)
- Appropriate sensitivity to client comfort levels
- Effective use of clinical judgment
Correct answer: Experiential avoidance that could compromise treatment fidelity and client outcomes
Therapist experiential avoidance can undermine ACT delivery; this is an ethical concern requiring supervision or personal work.
Question 4: A former ACT client contacts the therapist three months after termination seeking a friendship. The therapist's ethical response is to:
- Accept the friendship since therapy has ended
- Decline, explaining that post-termination relationships are ethically prohibited
- Agree to casual contact only at public events
- Consult ethics guidelines and exercise caution, as post-termination relationships remain ethically complex (Correct answer)
Correct answer: Consult ethics guidelines and exercise caution, as post-termination relationships remain ethically complex
Most ethics codes prohibit or strongly caution against post-termination personal relationships due to residual power dynamics and client vulnerability.
Question 5: Which practice best exemplifies the ethical principle of beneficence in ACT delivery?
- Using ACT with every client regardless of presenting concerns
- Selecting ACT when evidence supports its utility for the client's specific presentation (Correct answer)
- Minimizing session frequency to reduce client dependency
- Applying ACT metaphors to make sessions more entertaining
Correct answer: Selecting ACT when evidence supports its utility for the client's specific presentation
Beneficence requires actively choosing treatments with evidence of effectiveness for the client's specific needs rather than applying a one-size-fits-all approach.
Question 6: Documentation of ACT sessions should include which element to meet ethical and legal standards?
- Verbatim transcripts of metaphors used
- Progress toward identified values-based behavioral goals (Correct answer)
- The client's scores on all administered psychological tests
- Detailed critique of the client's cognitive content
Correct answer: Progress toward identified values-based behavioral goals
Ethical documentation captures functional progress—movement toward values-based behavioral goals—which is central to ACT's treatment framework.
Question 7: A client from a collectivist cultural background resists individual values clarification exercises, preferring to define goals through family obligations. The ACT therapist should:
- Insist on individually-authored values to maintain treatment integrity
- Adapt the values work to honor collective and relational values as genuinely the client's own (Correct answer)
- Refer the client to a culturally specialized therapist
- Postpone values work until the client accepts individualistic framing
Correct answer: Adapt the values work to honor collective and relational values as genuinely the client's own
ACT's values component is flexible enough to encompass relational and collective values; imposing individualistic frameworks would be culturally inappropriate and ethically problematic.
ACT Ethics & Professional Standards 3
An ACT consultant is asked to train organizational staff in ACT-based resilience.
Before proceeding, the most critical ethical consideration is: