Apr 25, 2026 · 1 hr 18 min · 13 segments
In Episode 373 of the Counselling Tutor Podcast, your hosts Rory Lees-Oakes and Ken Kelly take us through this week's three topics: Firstly, in 'Ethical, Sustainable Practice', they explore…
Ken KellyHostIrini AgianniGuestSarah Henry
Now, this is something we need to do in counseling and psychotherapy all the time, but we're speaking specifically now around the tech that you might adopt in your counseling practice.
Um, and just to remind everyone that as therapists, certainly if you're working under a- any ethical framework, we have a duty of candor, and that means that if we think something is, um, endangering our clients or indeed colleagues or the general public, we, we need to call it out.
If, if your organization is doing something that may seriously disadvantage, um, the people that you're working with, be they clients or, or our colleagues or the general public, as I've said, then we have a duty of candor to, to call that out.
And, you know, working with a duty of candor means that we need to think about how we present our case.
So if there's something that we're not happy with, we make what we call a defensible decision, and that really matters because in terms of AI, because up to this point, um, the focus has, has really been t- re- really on y- your practice.
We've talked about this on the podcast a lot, and at some point you may need to make a decision about AI in your practice, and when this happens, you can't just go on instincts alone.
I think it's wrong," uh, or, "This AI app doesn't work." What you need to be thinking about is why.
You need to be able to explain, justify, and stand professionally behind what your concern is.
And I guess, Ken, it's moving from instinct to processes, and it's going from that gut feeling there's something wrong here to-
And I think this extends beyond AI, although we are delving specifically into AI during this season, uh, because it's a very, very hot topic, but it's any application or piece of technology, including the email provider that you use, anything that you use within your practice where client information is crossing into that or, or, or it's being used in a practice application.
And a- as you said, Rory, you know, we, we've already spoken about mindset, and this is mindset specifically towards AI and how you might look at that and what might come up for you when you look at that, and how we can project into that whatever messaging we might have heard from, uh, the, the different places we might have gained our information, and w- we can hold a bias.
And w- when we're talking about defensible decision-making, it takes it away from what our gut might say.
'Cause I might see something, a little piece of software maybe that a, a colleague shows me, and think, "Oh, that's brilliant, that is.
Oh, well, that's gonna be really useful in my practice," and that's my gut reaction to it.
But if I was called to account if something went wrong with that software, my gut reaction to whether I thought it was good or bad is not going to stand me in good stead.
We need to make a defendable decision for anything that we use within our practice, and we're doing this all the time anyway, I guess, Rory.
Now, this is something we need to do in counseling and psychotherapy all the time, but we're speaking specifically now around the tech that you might adopt in your counseling practice.
Um, and just to remind everyone that as therapists, certainly if you're working under a- any ethical framework, we have a duty of candor, and that means that if we think something is, um, endangering our clients or indeed colleagues or the general public, we, we need to call it out.
If, if your organization is doing something that may seriously disadvantage, um, the people that you're working with, be they clients or, or our colleagues or the general public, as I've said, then we have a duty of candor to, to call that out.
And, you know, working with a duty of candor means that we need to think about how we present our case.
So if there's something that we're not happy with, we make what we call a defensible decision, and that really matters because in terms of AI, because up to this point, um, the focus has, has really been t- re- really on y- your practice.
We've talked about this on the podcast a lot, and at some point you may need to make a decision about AI in your practice, and when this happens, you can't just go on instincts alone.
I think it's wrong," uh, or, "This AI app doesn't work." What you need to be thinking about is why.
You need to be able to explain, justify, and stand professionally behind what your concern is.
And I guess, Ken, it's moving from instinct to processes, and it's going from that gut feeling there's something wrong here to-
And I think this extends beyond AI, although we are delving specifically into AI during this season, uh, because it's a very, very hot topic, but it's any application or piece of technology, including the email provider that you use, anything that you use within your practice where client information is crossing into that or, or, or it's being used in a practice application.
And a- as you said, Rory, you know, we, we've already spoken about mindset, and this is mindset specifically towards AI and how you might look at that and what might come up for you when you look at that, and how we can project into that whatever messaging we might have heard from, uh, the, the different places we might have gained our information, and w- we can hold a bias.
And w- when we're talking about defensible decision-making, it takes it away from what our gut might say.
'Cause I might see something, a little piece of software maybe that a, a colleague shows me, and think, "Oh, that's brilliant, that is.
Oh, well, that's gonna be really useful in my practice," and that's my gut reaction to it.
But if I was called to account if something went wrong with that software, my gut reaction to whether I thought it was good or bad is not going to stand me in good stead.
We need to make a defendable decision for anything that we use within our practice, and we're doing this all the time anyway, I guess, Rory.
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