Why clinical ethics consultants might not want to be educators

... Perhaps we should make explicit that clinical ethics consultants' work is to encourage and to assist others to think about the nature of their profession and reflect on their own behaviors, rather than to change behavior directly. Clinical ethics consultants' work is thus made more difficult, but it should be difficult. They should be continually challenged in their work (as teaching in that setting will do) because it will keep them from succumbing to their titles, from believing that they do know what is best, that they are ethics experts. Furthermore, clinical ethics consultants should be doing something very different from what other people in the healthcare environment are doing; they should acknowledge themselves as outsiders and should cherish that status because only then will they be able to ask the difficult questions that psychological proximity to and practical involvement in healthcare obscure. True education, of course, is the most dangerous activity, but the danger posed by such education is considerably more appealing than the danger posed by clinical ethics consultants who pursue and exert power in healthcare under cover of implicit claims and false beliefs about their expertise.