Confidentiality

Confidentiality is a promise that practicing psychology professionals make to their clients that all communications and information provided by the client will remain private except when required to be released by the law (Southern New Hampshire University, n.d.). However, confidentiality is not just a promise between a therapist and a client, but also a promise between industrial and organizational psychologists and the organizations that they work for as well as the employees they manage and oversee. Industrial and organizational psychologists must work to ensure all of the private and confidential information that they have access to remains confidential except when required by law. Confidentiality does have some legal exceptions; the main three exceptions are when an individual is suicidal with a plan and intent, an individual is homicidal with plan or intent, and when there is a strong suspicion of child abuse (Southern New Hampshire University, n.d.). While these are the three main exceptions for practicing psychology professionals in a therapy environment, there are other legal exceptions for those in the field of industrial and organizational psychology. An industrial and organizational psychologist might be required to turn over confidential documents to law enforcement by a warrant, court order, or by the organization that employs them.

Ethical Dilemmas of Confidentiality

These legal exceptions are the main reasons that a practicing psychology professional might be forced to break confidentiality, but there are other situations that can occur to cause an ethical dilemma regarding confidentiality. For instance, if a therapist thinks that a suicidal person has the intent to commit suicide, but is unsure if the client has a plan because the client refuses to talk about it; in this instance reporting the suicidal person could be a conflict of confidentiality which could cause an ethical dilemma for the therapist whether they should report the client or not. In the field of industrial and organizational psychology, practicing psychology professionals would have access to private records on the employees and could become aware of the possibility that an employee is stealing from the company, but does not have any evidence of the theft. In this instance, in order to explain their belief of theft, the private employee information would have to be shared which would be a breach of confidentiality. This situation would be an ethical dilemma because the industrial and organizational psychologist would be breaking confidentiality if they shared the information from the private records, yet if they were right and they did not share the information, then the theft from the company would be allowed to continue. 

Confidentiality’s Relation to Informed Consent

Confidentiality can be an element of informed consent as the practicing psychology professional will need to explain the level of confidentiality that is provided to both the professional and the individual. The individual needs to understand what type of confidentiality they will receive as a part of the proceedings, regardless of if the proceedings are treatment or research, in order for them to understand the level of privacy they will receive by giving their informed consent. 

References

Southern New Hampshire University. (n.d.). Informed consent and confidentiality. Retrieved from https://learn.snhu.edu/d2l/le/content/137539/viewContent/3253001/View