Abstract
M.Comm.
Industrial psychology is an evolving profession that continuously faces new challenges. In many
instances these challenges are of an ethical nature and compel consulting psychologists to make
ethical decisions. The profession is therefore in need of guidelines governing the ethical
decision-making process of professionals. The purpose of this study was to identify the
processes and frameworks utilised by consulting psychologists to make sound ethical decisions.
The study was conducted with a sample of ten registered industrial psychologists who function
as consultants to organisations. Semi-structured interviews with accompanying vignettes in the
interpretive paradigm were employed as data-gathering technique. Content analysis was
conducted to identify the most prominent frameworks informing the ethical decision-making
process of consulting psychologists. The findings indicated that the ethical decision-making
process does not follow a linear approach; it is, rather, an iterative process where the decisionmakers
move back and forth between different steps that they utilise within their ethical
decision-making frameworks. A conceptual framework of the ethical decision-making process
was designed to guide practitioners in the industrial psychology profession during ethical
decision-making.