Welcome to Ethics Uncoded: A Clinician’s Space for Ethics You Can Actually Use (and Won’t Put You to Sleep).

I’m excited to introduce a new project: Ethics Uncoded.

Ethics Uncoded is a clinician-centered space for turning messy, real-world ethical questions into practical guidance for therapists and other health professionals. My goal is to offer ethics education that is useful and honest—education that makes room for the messiness of practice, the realities of the systems we work in, and the places where ethics itself can fall short.

You might be here because you are:

• A licensed therapist (like me) or another type of clinician, working in healthcare, mental health, or somewhere in-between.

• One of the many people I talk to who is terrified of “the board,” not because you’re doing anything wrong, but because you are not sure how it all works.

• A fellow clinician of any kind watching AI and tech creep into your work and wondering “is any of this is safe or okay?”

• Or maybe you are an overthinker with a strong internal radar for what feels fair, kind, or deeply wrong.

If that’s you: hi. You’re my people.

Before I go further, two quick clarifications.

• First, when I talk about the “cost” of clinical work, I’m mean the strain of practicing inside systems that are under‑resourced, inequitable, or badly designed. I am NOT talking about clients being too much or a burden.

• Second, Ethics Uncoded is an education project. I will not use identifiable client stories here. If I ever decide to share a de‑identified vignette for teaching, I will only do so with explicit permission and a great deal of care.

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Who I am (and why I’m like this)

I’m Tahlia Harrison, a licensed marriage and family therapist, educator, MA in bioethics, technology ethics, and science policy (nerd), and PhD candidate. I have been thinking about ethics for longer than is useful at a dinner party.

As a kid, I was overly cautious and quick to tell people when they were being mean. I am sure I was annoying. I also grew up in a multicultural and multiracial family of creatives and public‑facing people who took craft seriously and cared about their impact.

That combination of art + accountability basically wired my brain to ask two questions about almost everything: “What are we doing?” and “Who is this for?”

These days, you can find me in my therapy office, research lab, at conferences, and in other public spaces, having conversations about how we keep clinical and research practices safe. That includes everyday clinical work, more experimental treatments such as psychedelic-assisted therapy, and newer, less-charted territory like AI and digital mental health.

Over time, my questions have become things like: Is this practice or treatment sincerely helping, or is it mostly helping a billing metric? Whose comfort is this policy protecting, and whose safety is it costing? Who gets to decide what “ethical” looks like, and what (or who) is missing from that decision?

So yes, I am an ethics nerd. But if you regularly think about what’s good, fair, or right in your work and relationships, you might be one too.

Most therapists and clinicians I know already have a deep, sometimes anxious, ethical sense. They just don’t always call it that. That little jolt when you realize a policy doesn’t quite sit right in your body? Ethics. The unsettled feeling after a decision that is perfectly legal but still feels wrong? Ethics. An inner voice saying, “I know this is what I’m supposed to do, but it feels off”? Also ethics.

We are all walking around with internal ideas about what is good and bad, allowed and not okay. We just rarely get enough time or language to unpack where those ideas came from, who taught them to us, whose voices were left out, and what may need to evolve.

That is what I want to make space for with Ethics Uncoded.

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Why I’m starting this

There are a few reasons.

1. A lot of ethics content is surface level—telling clinicians what to do without helping them understand why.And yeah “not all ethics content,” blah blah but

People use words like ethical and unethical as if their meaning is obvious, neutral, and self-evident. But I rarely see people name the underlying values or philosophical commitments behind those labels. Very few posts or trainings explain why something is considered ethical or unethical, what value is being protected, or what changes when we add real complexity.

Even few ask what happens when we bring in culture, structural racism, disability, queer and trans identities, poverty, technology, family systems, institutions, and actual real-world constraints? If we are “doing ethics” well, our recommendations will absolutely change based on these contextual factors.

Historical context is often missing too. Ethics codes were written by particular people, at particular moments in time, with particular knowledge gaps. When we ignore that, clinicians end up carrying the weight of “ethical practice” without enough acknowledgment of the systems, policies, and technologies influencing what is possible in the first place.

Ethical vs. unethical without explanation, is not ethics. I believe we can do better than going off vibes.

If we are going to throw around words like ethical, we owe it to ourselves and one another to understand what we mean, how we got there, and who gets left out when we do not ask those questions.

2. Many therapists are silently terrified.

I know so many therapists and other clinicians who live with a low‑grade, constant anxiety about ethics.

I hear a lot of fear of unintentionally breaking a rule and losing their license. Or they’re confused about whether something is an ethics issue or a legal issue, both, or neither. And most have a united sense that the rules were written for very different contexts than the ones they’re practicing in now.

Most of us got a handful of graduate-school lectures, a laminated code, and maybe a dry CE course every few years. Then we were dropped into situations involving complex trauma, institutional pressure, digital tools, and systemic injustice.

Add social media, public callouts, cancel culture, and the fear of making one visible mistake, and it makes sense that so many clinicians feel like they are one wrong move away from disaster.

3. Our existing frameworks can be too narrow

Traditional bioethics and professional codes are not useless. They are often genuinely helpful. But they can also be incomplete guides for the reality of the work we do every day.

They tend to focus on individual decision-making, abstract principles, and tidy scenarios: two people in a room, a clear consent process, and no meaningful mention of racism, colonization, economics, disability, or algorithmic systems.

Real life is not tidy.

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What I’ll talk about here

This space is for people who want ethics that are deep, honest, and actually usable in real sessions, team meetings, and chart notes—not just in abstract debates.

Meaning, this will be a resource that: acknowledges power, history, and systems; treats lived experience as data; understands that something can technically be ethical and still feel terrible. There will also be no pretending that every ethical problem can be solved through better individual choices alone.

Ethics Uncoded will live in a few places: long-form writing here on the blog; video and podcast content on YouTube; and shorter, more conversational pieces and ongoing discussion on Instagram and TikTok.

Everyone takes in information differently. Hopefully, one of those formats works for your brain and your schedule.

Because confidentiality is non-negotiable, you will not see identifiable client stories used as content. When I talk about cases, they will be public examples before I would even consider composites, or situations shared with explicit permission and great care. You will not find thinly veiled versions of someone I am currently working with here.

There will be a future post about why that boundary matters so much to me.

You will see posts about things like:

Clinical ethics in real life. Boundary questions, documentation dilemmas, and dual relationships in small communities.

Moral injury. Questions like: “Are the actions I am being required to take out of alignment with my principles?” Or, “Is this exploitation, or am I just tired?”

Ethics and technology. AI notetaking, EHR features, digital mental-health tools, privacy, surveillance capitalism, “HIPAA-compliant” marketing, and how to think about technologies you did not ask for but may suddenly be expected to use.

Codes of ethics—and their limits. How clinical codes are structured, the values they are built to protect, where they serve us well, and where they fall short when we bring in systemic lenses, cultural context, or emerging technology.

Ethics versus law versus policy. How those categories overlap, where they diverge, and why “legal” does not automatically mean “ethical”—and vice versa.

The stories we internalize. The narratives we absorb in graduate school and early practice—like “you’ll lose your license if…”—and how those stories shape our clinical decisions, our fear, and our capacity to act.

Alternative and expanded frameworks. Looking beyond the big four—beneficence, non-maleficence, autonomy, and justice—and making room for care ethics, feminist ethics, disability justice, decolonial perspectives, and other approaches that ask: Whose experience is centered? Whose is missing? What are we assuming is normal?

Some pieces will be practical: “How should I think about using AI in my notes?”

Some will be reflective: “What are we really afraid of when we make decisions?”

And some will simply be me nerding out about ideas I wish someone had explained to me ten years ago.

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How I want this space to feel

More than anything, I want Ethics Uncoded to feel like a place where:

• Questions are welcome, especially the ones you are embarrassed to ask.

• You do not have to pretend you understand everything your board or institution says.

• You can admit that you are scared of “doing it wrong” without being shamed.

• You can say, “This doesn’t feel right,” and we can explore why together.

There are no stupid questions here.

If you’re curious about what something means, how a rule applies, or why everyone seems to be using a word a certain way, that’s exactly the kind of thing I want to talk and write about.

And if I miss something, get something wrong, or fail to see a perspective that matters, I want you to tell me—with kindness and openness. Robust disagreement is welcome. Online abuse is not.

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Most importantly, this cannot be only my voice

I am one person, with my own background, training, unconscious gaps, and limitations.

Even though I’m comfortable in the therapy room and the classroom, being this kind of public—on social media and on camera—makes me deeply uncomfortable. I will probably make mistakes. I’m doing it anyway, in part because I ask other people to do uncomfortable things in the name of growth every single day. It would feel dishonest not push myself alongside them..

This is also why Ethics Uncoded is not meant to be the definitive voice on anything. I want this project to be collaborative.

If theres’s a topic you want covered, please reach out and let me know.

If there are people you follow who are doing beautiful, thoughtful ethics work—especially from communities and perspectives that have been historically ignored—I want to know about them. I want to build this space together.

If you’re someone who’s been thinking deeply about these questions and you want to talk, I want to talk to you.

The goal here is not to create one correct ethics take. The goal is community, curiosity, and care.

If any of this resonates, reach out anytime.

Bring your questions, your “is this just me?”, your “I’ve never said this out loud but…”

Join me here on the blog, in the podcast and videos on YouTube, or in the clinician corners of Instagram and TikTok—wherever it feels easiest to stay in the conversation.

You don’t have to have the right vocabulary. You don’t need to agree with me. You just have to be willing to think, feel, and stay in the conversation.

Let’s see if we can all be good—together, and on purpose.

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Writers Note: I refuse to discontinue my use of the em dash out of fear that you’ll think my writing is AI. TBH, I’m feeling compelled now to overuse it in rebellion. I come from academia and am formally trained in science communication. I’m continually frustrated that the tools we have all been trained to use are the same tools that have trained AI and are now, by extension, making others question our own work.

All of my work comes directly from my clinical experience, training in bioethics and psychology, research, and ongoing conversations with clinicians across many disciplines. While digital tools are useful for routine publishing tasks—such as checking a document for typos and grammatical errors—I personally develop my concepts, arguments, and examples and do not use generative AI to write these essays.