 The topic we are going to discuss today is making ethical decisions and taking actions. This is very much evident that during the course of therapy and practice, when colleagues, supervisors or students engage themselves in a questionable act that could cause harm and lower the public trust, mental health professionals has a proactive role to play. There are many such situations in which distress is created because of the different actions which are being taken by either the students or by any scholar or by any supervisee or colleague. This is a very important ethical duty that when it is identified that an unethical act has taken place by a colleague or student that could cause harm to someone, so one has to identify that harm and one has to take a proactive role and talk about that. The reason is that if we do not highlight any unethical practice, we will not talk about it, so that will also become the part of the record and we will be able to see it again and again as a practice which is incorrect and which is morally and ethically wrong. Now, it's important to understand that this process is not that easy and whenever someone is going to talk about any such unrest in terms of publication, in terms of therapy, that something unethical has been done, there are many stressful situations that they have to face. Therapists working with diverse clients whose value contradicts with those in Western civilization or either in Eastern civilizations, they require specialized knowledge. This is a very important thing to understand that every culture has its own norms, it has some strengths, it has some weaknesses and when any individual from that specific culture comes for their therapeutic assessment or comes to take guidance or counseling for their therapy, then the therapist there will probably be mistaken in understanding the individual's ethnic background, his cultural problems, his practices, his norms, and he would be mistaken in understanding them and he will not be able to tell them any proper course of action. NAP and Wend Creek in 2007 proposed a soft universalistic approach. Now, what is the universalistic approach? It is very important to understand that when we talk about different cultures, we talk about different societies, we talk about different religions. There must be some commonality between all of them. Of course, we can see the differences because if there are no differences, then that culture, that society, that religion cannot be separated. But there must be something which is commonly embedded in all of them. So when we look closely, we can get to see that there is no such culture which teaches us that we should treat others badly. There is no such culture which teaches us that we should disrespect others, that we should not love them, that we should not respect them. I understand that they may be different in connotation, in the practices, in the way we behave, but of course the basic ethics and values of all religions and cultures are more or less the same. Without the individual variation, if we talk about their core and trucks, then we are trying to teach them something good. So the soft universalistic approach is that that we have to see the moral and ethical value of all the things which are being practiced in that specific culture, religion or society and we have to ignore the other specific part of the religion we have seen in terms of the practice. It is not necessary to see how they are practicing that religion but if there is goodness in its essence, if there is righteous behaviour in its essence, then we should focus on it. So now we understand that most of the cultures share the basic values, but of course they are not expressed in the same way. Therapists need to assess this wider perspective by focusing on principal ethics. The most important thing is to focus on whether we have to give people respect, whether we have to give people compassion, rather than what will be the domain of it, how it will be given. Then therapists should not try to become more proficient culturally, but also try to make effort to reflect on the impact of their own beliefs and practices when dealing with culturally diverse clients. It is not necessary that another individual's culture is adapted to 100% and then therapists understand it and give it therapy. Rather, your cultural beliefs and your cultural thoughts and norms use the ethically embedded goodness to deal with culturally diverse clients so that from their personality, from their problems, from their lifestyle and story, you can only pick that component which you can ethically deal with. The rest of the things will be unethical to deal with on a one-to-one basis. For example, a big challenge for local therapists involving working with the immigrants from Afghanistan do not know their language well to communicate or have certain stereotypes and prejudices against them. Now if we talk about even in Pakistan, when we talk about therapy, when there are Afghan immigrants and they have the language problem, they know the language and therapists only know Urdu or Punjabi. So it is not possible to communicate with them. So this could be one of the very, very pertinent barriers which culturally diverse individuals can face. Along with this, if they use a translator or any other mechanism, they could discuss this about them or they could have a specific kind of stereotypes about them. That the Afghans have a special stereotype in their mind and deal with that client to keep that stereotype in mind. So this could be a very unethical practice. Knowing, understanding and creating sensitivity to world's view different from world's own is a critical step towards making sound decisions about therapy directions. We cannot face our personal point of view. We have a universal point of view in the world which supports ethics which supports goodness which supports well-being. We have to keep that in mind and settle our goals. We cannot be judgmental. We cannot be segregated. We cannot be biased about any kind of client who comes to us in a therapeutic second. Rather, we have to take him as a diverse population and give him counselling and treatment through ethically embedded principles.