Feb 20

All Parties Are Clients: The Ethical Weight of Simultaneous Services

Couples therapy. Family therapy. Group programs.

Most of us are comfortable working in these spaces. They’re common, rewarding, and often deeply meaningful.

But the new PsyBA Code of Conduct and the 2025 APS Professional Practice Guidelines on simultaneous services sharpen something that can easily fade into the background:

When you provide a simultaneous service, every participant is your client.

That sounds straightforward but it carries real ethical weight.
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What changes when everyone is a client?

When all parties are considered clients:
  • You owe duties of care to each person individually
  • Confidentiality becomes shared and limited, not private and absolute
  • Interests may conflict
 
Neutrality becomes ethically significant, not just relationally useful

You are not simply “working with a couple.” You are providing psychological services to two individuals within a shared therapeutic structure.

That shift matters.

The confidentiality conversation most clinicians rush

Simultaneous services require very explicit informed consent. Not generic consent, specific consent.

At the outset, you should be clarifying:
  • How information shared individually will be handled
  • Whether there will be a “no secrets” policy
  • How record keeping will work
  • What happens if one party requests access to records
  • How disclosures outside session will be managed

These conversations can feel awkward. But they are far less awkward at the beginning than during rupture.
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The common grey zone: Individual sessions alongside joint work

The 2025 guidance doesn’t prohibit seeing one member of a couple individually, but it reinforces that this creates a multiple relationship risk.
The question isn’t: “Is this allowed?”

The better questions are:
  • Can I maintain objectivity?
  • Will this undermine trust?
  • Can I manage confidentiality fairly?
  • How will I explain this to both parties?
  • Have I documented my reasoning?

Simultaneous services aren’t inherently risky, they’re just ethically denser.

They require deliberate structure, not improvisation.

Record-keeping is not just administrative, it’s ethically important

The guidelines place particular emphasis on clarity around records.

Before you begin, consider:
  • One shared file or separate notes?
  • How are risk disclosures documented?
  • If one party subpoenas records, what is disclosed?
 

You don’t need perfect answers to every hypothetical but you do need a defensible framework.

The real shift in 2025

What feels different in this iteration of guidance is the clarity around:
  • role definition
  • competing interests
  • and documentation

Simultaneous services work beautifully when they are structured carefully. Just make sure you have a plan.

If you feel you need to upskill on the 2025 Code of Conduct and APS Guidelines we have a set of trainings available to support you with this. Click here to find out more