Ethics in Coaching

According to a 2017 Forbes article titled, “The Success and Failure of the Coaching Industry”, coaching “is estimated to be a $2 billion global industry that is rapidly growing”. The article also cites the International Coach Federation (ICF) in stating that the number of worldwide coaches has grown from 47,500 in 2012 to 53,300 in 2016, adding approximately 1,500 coaches per year for the last four years. Despite this amount of rapid growth, it remains unregulated in contrast to similar people-care industries such as healthcare, psychology and counseling.

Although it has not yet achieved a state of agreed upon regulation, there are many coaching associations that have attempted to create and uphold standards for the industry. The ICF, Association for Coaching (AC), European Mentoring and Coaching Council (EMCC), International Association of Coaching (IAC) and several more organizations have put forth standards for ethics and acceptable practices for coaching. These various bodies agree at least in part on many, although not all points. This can be seen as the beginnings of a future, singular, unifying regulated standard.

In the meantime, it is imperative that coaches like myself, dedicate ourselves fully to adhering to and openly articulating ethical standards and values for our practices with clients. While many of us uphold a certain collection of implied standards it is becoming increasingly important that we find more overt ways of communicating these ethical standards for our clients, organizations, peers and the general public.

It is our duty individually and as a community to contribute to the validity and credibility of our profession by learning, developing, sharing and communicating our understanding, adherence to and knowledge of such standards now, until and beyond the point that our industry establishes full regulation. For my part I am currently working on a comprehensive representation of my practicing standards as a coach to be posted on this site.