DOCA.7:4.2 - Bound the service by competence and applicable duties

Agree what assistance is being offered and excluded. Distinguish development-direction advice from assessment, teaching, psychotherapy, recruitment, sales, programme design, and implementation when confusion would change what the client receives. A referral or a smaller service may be the correct result.

Determine the professional and local requirements that actually apply to this service, jurisdiction, and client relationship. Use their competent interpretation when applicability is uncertain. A professional code cited in this pattern establishes neither a licence nor every local duty. Do not assert assessment competence, legal authority, or a client’s capacity from an adviser title or a signed form.

Ask what the adviser can judge and which specialist results bear the requested claim. Use A.15.9 for a missing human-development, organizational, technical, safety, legal, financial, or other bounded result; reuse an adequate current one. Retain the advice supported now and its material limit; a missing result becomes a request only when A.15.9 and C.11.DUA select its obtainable contribution against the whole acquisition burden. The supplying practice retains its Method and conclusion. Coordinating a career or organization question does not transfer those competences to the adviser.

For human career services, the applicable professional basis may require informed participation, competent assessment and interpretation, and appropriate referral or closure. NCDA’s 2024 Code of Ethics, A.2, A.10, and E.2 supplies that bounded line. Apply it within its professional scope; obtain qualified help for consent or capacity questions that the adviser cannot resolve.