To sort out the elements of an ethical problem and fashion an acceptable solution, psychologists must balance competing values and cope with unexpected outcomes. They must know (or decide) to whom and for what they are accountable. Community psychologists often work in situations where loyalties are unclear, and where the ripple effect of interventions maximizes the possibility of unanticipated consequences. Two cases are presented to illustrate problems of accountability and the need to transform an ethical decision into a series of choices guided by emerging information.

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The f iOdc of Ethics of the Canadian Psychological Association (CPA) is based on four ethical principles that are ranked in a hierarchy of importance. The code states that when these principles conflict, decisions should usually be based on relative rank order. A study was conducted to sec whether pre-professional psychology students would endorse solutions to ethical dilemmas that were consistent with the ranking of principles recommended in the code. In response to a scries of vignettes pilling the four CPA principles against one another, participants endorsed choices in a statistically significant pattern of decreasing frequency that was consistent with the ranking. There was also considerable variation in responses to vignettes that pitted the same two principles against each other, indicating that context affects decisions about what is ethical. Results are discussed with regard to training in professional ethics.

Psychological burnout was assessed in staff members at workshops and community residences for the developmentally disabled. Participants also rated expectations for client progress and for their own contribution to clients. They reported on change in expectation since they entered the field. High expectations were related to low burnout; workers who reported experiencing large negative expectation change were most burned out. Burnout seemed to be prevented when staff members made an expectation shift from reliance on client progress to a sense of personal efficacy. This finding is discussed in terms of personal causation, internal control of reinforcement, and adaptation-level theory. There was little evidence of client depersonalization, a usual component of burnout. Such a burnout pattern may be a function of the ethic of community care for the developmentally disabled.

The way we look at problems affects how we study them and try to solve them. Different interventions become salient depending on whether we focus on individuals perceived to have the problem, on the social setting that fosters it, or on an interaction of the two. As psychologists, our training is conducive to thinking on the individual rather than on the system level. When we employ research strategies that personalize the political, we risk being complicit with conservative political agendas that avoid social change by focusing on individual dysfunction. Even community psychologists, despite dealing in system-level theories, too often transform these into individual-level research. I will use, as examples, poverty, drugs, homelessness, resilience, and empowerment. I argue that since our research can provide a justification for either changing or maintaining the status quo, it has ethical implications.