Objectivity or Advocacy? The Ethics of the Scout Mindset in Psychoeducational Assessment

Psychologists often act as advocates when conducting diagnostic evaluations, using their reports as a way to assist clients in achieving their goals. At times, this comes at the expense of objectivity. The “soldier” and “scout” mindsets are useful metaphors for biased and unbiased reasoning, respectively, and they apply well to the practice of conducting psychological evaluations. Psychologists face several strong incentives for adopting a soldier mindset, but these can lead to unethical practices. Cultivating a scout mindset of actively open-minded thinking, in which a wide variety of assessment data are obtained, considered fairly and in an evenhanded manner, and presented with appropriate degrees of confidence, is critical for ethical psychological evaluations. There are certain types of advocacy that can coexist with such practices, but any attempts at advocacy must respect objectivity as a higher goal.