. Identify 3 ethical issues in each paragraph and describe how each is applied. . Which are the appropriate recommendations for these ethical issues to be avoided or resolved in the future.

Alana's Reflection

Well, I must say I'm not sure about this reflective practice' stuff, it all sounds a bit "airy fairy" to me, but... you do what you have to do to stay accredited, I suppose. The course suggests reflection across a period of time, so I've decided to think back over the past three months and 'reflect'.

1- Generally speaking, things have been pretty lean. As private practitioner running a business as a private mediator and conflict coach, I've noticed a real drop-off of enquiries since the State Government started their cost-cutting campaign across government departments, where I use to get a lot of my work. This has meant I have relly had to work hard to get every job, and I've even taken a couple of mediations I wouldn't normally take - "spousals" where the separating couple said they just wanted to discuss property issues, not children. Wow, they were something else!

2- The other case I did that comes to mind is a series of conflict coaching sessions I had with a small business manager who was having trouble with staff issues. He's in real estate and basically the problem was female staff members getting pregnant and all wanting special arrangements, extra leave, etc., etc,. I know it's not politically correct, but they really cause havoc when running a business - some of the stories he told me, you wouldn't believe. Anyway, the end result of us working through the issues was that he's been able to terminated one staff member and he thinks he can set up something in the recruitment area to balance out the number of men and women who are employed. It's a real problem when the majority of people who apply for these sort of jobs are women.

3- The final thing that's been going on for me over the past few months is that I'm trying to find creative ways to get more business in, especially in these tough financial times. I'm going to change my advertising by revamping my website, changing my print advertising and my brochures to be more generic so that I can appeal to a wider potential client pool. I'm also going to remove my charging schedule, and only give this information out after I meet or discuss the case, as this will let me negotiate an hourly fee, or a flat rate, depending on what I think they can afford. I have seen references to 'settlement rates' on other practitioner's websites, I think that might also be a good idea to show I can get results.