Professional ethics are an inherent part of every occupation and attempt to develop or evaluate moral standards for a defined group. Health-based professions have a unique relationship in the dynamics between patient and provider, the integrity of which must be protected in order to maintain the professional relationship between the individuals. Many medical based organizations have a written code of ethics for their constituents and members to follow, but ethics in personal training has only recently begun to realize the profession has many aspects that are affected by a moral code. At the onset, ethical focus centered on the trainer and his or her clients from a relationship and level of due care standpoint, but as the profession evolves more emphasis is being placed on the importance of preserving the integrity of the profession as a whole. This places added ethical responsibility upon the professional to serve the client, organization, profession, and society. Of course the foundation of any health-based profession is protecting the client’s best interests, but with prevention becoming a growing aspect of the future of health and wellness in this country, personal trainers will be further scrutinized for competency, peer interactions, and professional role delineation.
The specialized nature of the field of personal training opens it up to questions concerning the personal trainers’ professional behaviors and activities. Ethics in personal training can be categorized by the stakeholders served by the professional credential. Each stakeholder is affected by the actions and decisions of the personal trainer, some of which are fairly insignificant whereas others are of major relevance. For instance, a personal trainer has an ethical responsibility to the client to practice in good faith as a qualified professional. Presenting and marketing a certified status is unethical if it is not valid. Four common occurrences fall under this classification: 1) taking an online or open book test, 2) failing a certification test but using the credential under false representation, 3) letting a valid certification expire and not acknowledging a change in professional status, and 4) participating in a continued education course and calling it a certification. Each of these actions is a compromise to professional ethics. In some cases these ethics are compromised unknowingly whereas in others it’s a blatant disregard for what is right and wrong.
Knowing one’s certification is expired and advertising or presenting oneself as a credentialed professional is an example of known disregard because that person is lying about their professional status. Although a common practice, this compromise to professional ethics can affect the client, employer, and organization. In fact this unethical act goes against the common codes of all legitimate organizations to the point that it falls under a disciplinary category with significant sanctions attached. False representation is also commonly categorized in this section under the organization’s ethical code because it is another form of lying about one’s current status. In some cases, a professional will attempt to be ethical and actually prepare and sit for a certification exam but fail to earn the credential. A familiar scenario from there is to tell an employer or client that the credential was in fact earned thereby lying and compromising the ethical code. In extreme cases of false representation some individuals will actually generate fraudulent paperwork and even create a phony certificate. Some individuals justify the actions because they have committed time and effort toward earning the credential but without validly establishing the minimum competency defined by the organization, have not reached the qualification status reflected by the credential. This is similar to learning how to swim and then pretending to be a certified lifeguard. Maybe nothing bad will come of it, or maybe someone who should have been saved will drown. The organization and profession may not experience a physical injury or life threatening situation from the fraudulent efforts but when poor practices are associated with a credential, it lowers the perceived value of that credential and the value of a trainer as a whole. A reoccurring black eye for the industry is the number of under-qualified practitioners.
Another form of ethical compromise related to the representation of one’s qualification comes from attaining a “certification” by an unproctored, online or open book examination process. Although completely legal in the fitness industry due to self regulation, certification mills provide certifications for anyone who can read and write regardless of their actual knowledge base and skill set. This shortcut to employment poses the same threat to the consumer, but yields a reduced ethical responsibility to the organization that provides the credential because they knowingly offer it in that manner. Getting certified in this manner is unethical because there are no regulatory processes in place to valid who is actually taking the exam and what materials are being utilized during the test.
The real ethical quandary occurs in this situation when one knowingly selects a certification because it requires little or no preparation and pass rates are almost, if not, guaranteed. The purpose of valid certification is to ensure that the stakeholders served are provided with an acceptable level of protection from harm and will receive an appropriate level of professionalism. Avoiding a legitimate assessment of one’s skills for the purposes of monetary gain is unethical. To make self-regulation work requires professionals to commit to an ethical path and employers to hold them to that commitment. When ethics are disregarded the only way to ensure adequate qualifications is through legal channels such as State licensure.
In addition to knowingly presenting an invalidated or false set of qualifications, ethical conflicts related to representation may also occur from actually participating in actions that advance knowledge. Advancing one’s knowledge is obviously the ethical thing to do and is certainly required by legitimate certification programs and licensing boards, but it is the way the training is used that is often scrutinized. Taking a continued education course and claiming that one is now certified in the course content is not an ethical act. In the same way learning how to use Powerpoint does not make one a certified Microsoft programmer, taking a course at a trade show or weekend program will not make someone a certified nutritionist. The fitness industry is somewhat unique in that continued education providers issue certifications in anything a personal trainer may do regardless of its depth, content, or scope. This is particularly a problem when the activities learned and “certified” are outside the scope of the profession of personal training such as rehabilitation. Continued education can also raise ethical red flags when personal trainers present education and training under false pretenses. When filing for recertification it is unethical to falsify participation hours, embellish upon content, change participation dates and dishonestly report at any level. Technology has created a viable option for the unethical to actually modify documents or even create logo embossed certificates of completion. Although organizations are well aware of these practices, they occur on a frequent basis.
The growth and acceptance of personal training as an allied health field in the area of prevention is based on the actions of individuals. From the aforementioned it should be now clear the apparent connection of the personal trainer’s moral character to the many stakeholders of the industry, including society in the broadest sense. Therefore individuals must develop a solid ethical framework for how they should behave in any number of situations. An ethical individual can distinguish between right and wrong; the same individual can also commit to making good decisions based on just principles and established codes. Unlike the tenets of law, however, which are regulations set in stone; ethical decisions tend to depend on conscience and are usually made on a case-by-case basis under pressures of influential factors. Doing the right thing is sometimes more difficult and less rewarding, but there is always a reason why it is the right thing to do.
