Language: ASPPB offers a French form of the EPPP (the FEPPP) where a licensing authority legally requires one. ASPPB has not yet published the competency statements in French, so our questions and cards are in English until it does.

6.C.4

Owning mistakes and correcting them

ASPPB's competency statement 6.C.4: Accept responsibility for one’s professional activities and take corrective action when needed

Every psychologist makes errors; what the codes require is accepting responsibility and acting to correct them and prevent their return. The APA Code expects psychologists to correct misuse or misrepresentation of their work, fix significant errors in published data, answer for work they delegate and cooperate with ethics bodies. The CPA Code's decision process ends with taking responsibility for consequences, correcting harm and preventing recurrence, which applies to mistakes as much as to dilemmas.

Key ideas

Misuse of one's work: Standard 1.01: if psychologists learn of misuse or misrepresentation of their work, they take reasonable steps to correct or minimize it, whether the misuse comes from a report, a quotation or an organization's decision.
Errors in published work: Standard 8.10(b): psychologists who discover significant errors in their published data take reasonable steps to correct them through a correction, retraction, erratum or other appropriate means of publication.
Delegated work: Standard 2.05: psychologists delegate work only to people who can perform it competently, given their education, training or experience, and take reasonable steps to see that they perform it competently.
Cooperating with ethics bodies: Standard 1.06: psychologists cooperate with ethics investigations and proceedings, and failing to cooperate is itself a violation; asking to defer a ruling until related litigation ends is not, by itself, noncooperation.
Correcting harm: The CPA Code's Principle II, Responsible Caring, includes the value Offset/Correct Harm, and its decision process ends with assuming responsibility for consequences, correcting negative consequences and acting to prevent a recurrence.

Worked example

Reviewing her caseload, a psychologist realizes that two months ago she agreed to send a client's physician a letter asking for a sleep study and never sent it. The client's daytime sleepiness has worsened, and he has assumed the referral was under way.

Act at once: send the letter today and call the physician's office to ask for a prompt appointment.
Tell the client plainly what happened, apologize, and explain what she has done to fix it, in keeping with the straightforwardness and openness the CPA Code values under Principle III, Integrity in Relationships.
Record the error and the corrective steps in the client's record (Standard 6.01).
Prevent a recurrence: set up a list of pending referrals and review it every week, the final step of the CPA decision process.

Correct the error, tell the person affected, record it, and change the system that let it happen.

Check yourself

A psychologist learns that a school is citing her evaluation report to justify a disciplinary decision the report never recommended. Under APA Standard 1.01, what should she do?

Practise 6.C.4

Sources

American Psychological Association (2017), Ethical Principles of Psychologists and Code of Conduct, Standards 1.01, 1.06, 2.05, 6.01 and 8.10(b)
Canadian Psychological Association (2017), Canadian Code of Ethics for Psychologists, Fourth Edition, Principle II, Responsible Caring, value Offset/Correct Harm; Principle III, Integrity in Relationships, value Straightforwardness/Openness; Ethical Decision-Making Process, final steps