What dual relationships are, what the APS Code of Ethics requires, where the genuine risks lie in supervision and practice, and how to navigate situations that rarely fit the textbook version.
"Avoid dual relationships" is one of the most common warnings provisional psychologists receive. It is also one of the least clearly explained.
Most ethics training covers the obvious cases — don't treat your close friends, don't enter into business arrangements with clients. What it covers less well is the messier reality: the client who turns out to be your child's teacher, the supervisor who controls both your caseload and your competency assessment, the colleague from your masters cohort who later books an appointment with you.
This article looks at what dual relationships actually are, what the Australian ethical framework requires, where the genuine risks lie, and how to navigate situations that rarely fit the textbook version.
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A dual relationship — sometimes called a multiple relationship — exists when a psychologist holds more than one kind of relationship with the same person at the same time, or enters into a second relationship with someone they are already in a professional relationship with.
The defining feature is not that two relationships exist. It is that those relationships create competing interests, obligations, or power dynamics that could compromise professional judgment, reduce objectivity, or place the person in the less powerful position at risk of harm.
A psychologist who provides therapy to a close family member holds a dual relationship. So does a supervisor who employs their supervisee and makes decisions about both their caseload and their competency assessment. So does a psychologist who agrees to assess a colleague from their postgraduate cohort for a medicolegal report.
Not all dual relationships are equally serious. But all of them require active recognition and management — and the responsibility for that recognition sits with the professional, not with the client, student, or supervisee.
The Australian Psychological Society Code of Ethics addresses multiple relationships directly under principle A.5.
The core obligation is that psychologists must not exploit persons with whom they are in a professional relationship, and must not enter into relationships that could reasonably be expected to impair objectivity, competence, or effectiveness — or that risk exploitation or harm.
The Code specifically identifies the following as contexts where multiple relationship concerns most commonly arise:
One thing that surprises many provisional psychologists is that the APS Code is intentionally principle-based rather than exhaustive. It does not provide a list of prohibited relationships for every scenario. Instead, it requires psychologists to exercise professional judgment about risk, power, objectivity, and harm — in context, and case by case.
This is why dual relationship situations can feel genuinely ambiguous in practice. The Code is not a lookup table. It is a framework for reasoning.
The responsibility for identifying and managing dual relationships rests with the psychologist in the position of professional authority — not with the person in their care.
Reduced objectivity. A psychologist treating a close friend may unconsciously avoid confronting material that would be clinically important to address. This is not a failure of character — it is a predictable feature of human cognition. Personal investment changes what we notice and what we avoid.
Consider a provisional psychologist who begins seeing a client and then discovers the client is a close friend of their partner. The therapeutic material that eventually emerges — about the friend's relationship, about conflict, about aspects of the client's life that intersect with the psychologist's own — will be genuinely difficult to engage with neutrally. The dual relationship does not make the psychologist a bad clinician. It creates structural conditions in which good clinical judgment becomes harder.
Power imbalance and exploitation risk. Professional relationships in psychology are inherently asymmetric. Clients, supervisees, and students are often disclosing sensitive material, seeking guidance, or depending on the professional's assessment for consequential outcomes. A second relationship that compounds this asymmetry significantly increases the risk that the power differential is exploited — even unintentionally.
A supervisor who is also a close personal mentor to their supervisee, for example, may create conditions in which the supervisee finds it genuinely difficult to raise concerns about their supervision, decline requests, or advocate for their own professional needs. The power differential becomes harder to navigate precisely because the relationship feels safe and close.
Conflicting obligations. When a psychologist holds competing responsibilities to the same person across different contexts, those responsibilities will eventually come into tension. A supervisor who must assess a supervisee's clinical competency may find that assessment influenced by their personal investment in the supervisee's success, by institutional pressures, or by their role as the supervisee's employer.
Boundary drift. The movement from professional to personal — or the gradual intrusion of personal dynamics into a professional relationship — tends to be incremental rather than sudden. It is often invisible from inside the relationship until significant harm has already occurred.
Many problematic dual relationships do not begin with obvious exploitation or poor intent. They often develop gradually — through increased familiarity, informal contact, blurred roles, or attempts on both sides to be warm and helpful.
A supervisor who begins sharing personal difficulties with a supervisee is not necessarily acting with bad intent. But if that pattern continues, the frame of the supervisory relationship shifts in ways that compromise its function — and the supervisee, who holds less power, is less able to name or address what is happening.
This is part of what makes dual relationships ethically difficult. People inside the relationship may genuinely believe the situation is manageable while slowly losing the professional distance required to assess it clearly.
Good ethical practice is not about assuming bad intent. It is about recognising that human judgment becomes less reliable when roles, loyalties, and emotional investments overlap — and building in external checks accordingly.
Much of the ethics training provisional psychologists receive focuses on client relationships. The dual relationship risks that arise in supervision receive less attention and are arguably more common.
The employer-supervisor dynamic. When your principal supervisor also manages your employment — controlling your caseload, your working conditions, your income, and your competency assessment simultaneously — the conflict of interest is structural rather than personal.
A provisional psychologist in a private practice setting whose supervisor is also the practice owner faces this dynamic in an acute form. If the supervisor's assessment of their competency is influenced, even subtly, by how productive they are as an employee, the supervisory function has been compromised. Naming this conflict early — and ideally establishing how competency assessment will be handled independently of employment interests — is part of managing it.
The assessor-advocate tension. All supervisors hold a dual function that is inherent to the role: they are simultaneously responsible for your development and for gatekeeping access to registration. A good supervisor holds that tension explicitly and transparently. A poor one collapses it in ways that serve institutional interests, personal relationships, or the path of least resistance rather than the supervisee's actual development or client safety.
Pre-existing personal relationships. A provisional psychologist who arranges supervision with a close family friend — perhaps a senior psychologist they have known personally for years — may find that the personal warmth of the relationship makes honest critical feedback genuinely difficult to give or receive. The supervisory function requires the ability to name clinical concerns clearly. That function is harder when the relationship carries significant personal history.
The referrer-within-the-network. A supervisor who refers their supervisee to their own close colleagues for additional support — a treating psychologist, a secondary supervisor, a training course — creates a web of interconnected relationships that can make it difficult for the supervisee to raise concerns about any of them without feeling that the whole network is implicated.
For provisional psychologists, recognising supervisory dual relationships matters for two reasons: you are in the less powerful position and therefore more exposed to the harms they create; and understanding these dynamics now will shape how you build your own supervisory relationships later.
Australia's geography and the relatively small size of many professional communities mean that dual relationships are not always avoidable. A psychologist practising in a rural or regional town may encounter clients in other contexts regularly. A clinician working within a specific cultural, linguistic, or religious community may have pre-existing relationships with clients or their families that cannot be neatly separated.
The APS Code and AHPRA guidelines both acknowledge this reality. The ethical obligation in unavoidable dual relationship situations is not abstention but careful management.
Identify it explicitly. Acknowledging that a second relationship exists is the starting point. Hoping it will not become relevant is where problems tend to develop.
Assess the risk. What specifically could compromise your professional judgment or harm the other person? Are those risks manageable given the circumstances and the nature of the work?
Consult. Bring it to supervision or peer consultation. External perspective identifies blind spots that are difficult to see from inside the relationship.
Document. Record that you identified the dual relationship, how you assessed the risk, what steps you took to manage it, and how you plan to monitor it. This documentation protects both parties.
Refer if necessary. If the dual relationship cannot be managed in a way that adequately protects the other person and the integrity of the professional work, referral is the appropriate response — even where it creates practical difficulty.
Raise it in supervision. A dual relationship you have identified — with a client, a colleague, or within the supervisory relationship itself — needs to go to supervision promptly. If the dual relationship involves your supervisor, seek peer consultation or a secondary supervisor who is independent of that dynamic.
Do not manage it alone. The instinct to handle dual relationship complexity quietly — particularly when it involves people you know personally — tends to make things worse. External consultation is both ethically appropriate and practically protective.
Be transparent where appropriate. In many cases, acknowledging the dual relationship to the other party is part of managing it ethically. This does not mean disclosing everything. It means being honest about the complexity and what you are doing to address it.
Document the process. What you identified, when, how you assessed it, who you consulted, and what you decided. If the situation is later questioned, a clear record of your reasoning is protective.
Err toward referral when in doubt. Where the dual relationship creates genuine risk that cannot be adequately managed — where objectivity is compromised, exploitation risk is real, or the other person's interests cannot be adequately protected — referral is the right call even when it is difficult.
AHPRA does not publish a standalone dual relationship policy. The relevant frameworks are the APS Code of Ethics, the Psychology Board of Australia's Code of Conduct, and relevant supervision guidelines.
In practice, concerns about dual relationships commonly arise where a psychologist failed to identify a dual relationship they should have recognised — or where they identified it and took no meaningful action.
The existence of a dual relationship is not in itself always a breach. What AHPRA and the APS look for is whether the psychologist:
For provisional psychologists, this matters in both directions. Your own practice needs to reflect these standards. And if you find yourself in a situation where a professional in a position of authority over you appears to be managing a dual relationship poorly — particularly one that involves you — knowing what the framework requires gives you a basis for raising it.
A client discloses mid-therapy that they are close friends with your partner.This situation arises more often than most provisional psychologists expect, particularly in smaller cities or close-knit communities. The dual relationship was not foreseeable at intake, but it exists now. Raise it in supervision immediately. Assess specifically how the friendship connection is likely to affect the therapeutic material going forward, your ability to engage neutrally, and the client's comfort with disclosure. Document the discussion and the decision. If the connection is significant — the friend regularly discusses the client with your partner, or the client knows this — referral is likely the most protective option.
Your supervisor is also the practice owner and holds decisions about your continued employment.This is a structural dual relationship that requires naming explicitly, ideally before the arrangement begins. The supervision agreement should address how competency assessment will be handled in a way that is not contaminated by employment interests. Seeking a secondary supervisor who has no financial or employment relationship with you provides an independent reference point for your development — and a separate space to raise concerns about the primary supervisory relationship if needed.
A former classmate from your postgraduate program contacts you seeking therapy.Shared training history creates a pre-existing relationship that is not simply neutral professional contact. You trained together, you likely know things about each other's personal lives and clinical struggles, and the power differential in the therapeutic relationship is complicated by a prior context in which you were peers. Decline and refer. The risk that the prior relationship contaminates the therapeutic frame is significant and not adequately manageable in most cases.
A client you have been seeing for six months asks whether you would be willing to provide a character reference for a family law matter.This is a request for a second professional role — forensic or quasi-legal — while a therapeutic relationship is active. The roles are in direct tension: therapeutic work prioritises the client's subjective experience; forensic work requires independent, objective assessment. Taking on the character reference role while continuing therapy compromises both. Discuss with the client what they actually need, explain the conflict clearly, and if a formal report is required, consider whether referral for that specific purpose is more appropriate than you providing both.
Your treating psychologist refers you to a colleague with whom they have a close personal and professional relationship for a second opinion.Not inherently problematic — referral networks within communities are normal and appropriate. But if your treating psychologist has a significant personal investment in the colleague's practice, or if the referral creates a situation in which raising concerns about either professional feels risky, that interconnection is worth naming. You are entitled to seek a referral to someone outside your treating psychologist's immediate network if you prefer.
A supervisee discloses during supervision that they are experiencing significant personal distress that is affecting their clinical work.This is a common situation that can shade quickly into dual relationship territory if the supervisor begins taking on a quasi-therapeutic role. Supervisors are not therapists for their supervisees. The appropriate response is to acknowledge the distress, address the clinical risk it presents for clients, and actively support the supervisee in accessing their own therapeutic support — not to provide that support directly within the supervisory frame.
When assessing whether a dual relationship requires action:
Dual relationships are one of the more nuanced areas of professional ethics in psychology — not because the underlying principles are complicated, but because the situations they arise in rarely present cleanly. Real professional life involves small communities, overlapping networks, relationships that develop in unexpected directions, and power dynamics that shift over time.
The ethical framework does not ask you to pretend that complexity does not exist. It asks you to identify it early, take it seriously, seek external input, and act in the interests of the people in your care.
For provisional psychologists building practice habits now, the question is not whether dual relationship situations will arise. It is whether you will recognise them when they do.
PsychVault is a marketplace for psychology and allied health resources built by Australian clinicians. Browse supervision documentation resources, reflective practice tools, and logbook templates at psychvault.com.au/resources.
Note: This article provides general information about ethical frameworks and is not a substitute for supervision, peer consultation, or professional legal advice. For specific concerns about dual relationships in your own practice, raise them with your supervisor or contact the APS Ethics Line.
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