School counseling plays an important role as the problems that high school students face become more complex. However, there are many challenging ethical situations on school grounds nowadays. Particularly, school counselors frequently confront complex ethical dilemmas that often involve relationships with principals, parents, and other stakeholders. In interacting with different people, school counselors must play various roles involving ethical issues. In Taiwanese high schools currently, school counselors must play multiple roles at the same time, including as educators, counselors, administrators, and so on. The potential for conflict in these situations can be exacerbated by differences in the roles and responsibilities of personnel within the school. Furthermore, unlike Western cultures that value individualism, Chinese culture is strongly influenced by the relationship network society. Therefore, playing multiple roles towards students is more likely to face ethical issues in Chinese culture. Based on the nature and characteristics of Chinese society, the ethical issue of multiple relationships is more complicated in Chinese culture. Hence, this study aims to explore the process of ethical judgment on multi-role conflicts encountered by high school counselors. Ethical judgment involves personal experiences, such as mental health struggles, ethical values, action decisions, adjustment strategies, reflection, etc. Therefore, the current study employed an exploratory, qualitative research design to assess the experiences and perceptions of participants.
　　The study data was collected from the interviews of five participants working in senior high schools for at least three years. This study employed purposive sampling methods to find school counselors for the interviews. All participants indicated their interest in the study by providing their names and signing research consent. The data analysis was conducted with Template Analysis Style, which is a method of thematic analysis that has been applied in a broad range of research areas in the social sciences. Regarding the results, participants'experiences of the ethical judgment process were divided into four stages, including the conflict stage, decision stage, action stage, and influence stage. Initially, the first stage was identified as the conflict stage. High school counselors encountered: (1) the conflict of different responsibilities among multiple roles, (2) the conflict between clients'well-being and administrative requirements, and (3) the conflict between professional expectations and interpersonal needs. In the decision stage, the main considerations included: (1) the best welfare of clients, (2) considering the administrative ethics in a school organization, and (3) the influence of Chinese interpersonal interaction. In the action stage, the current study indicated that high school counselors would take four strategies in the ethical dilemma: (1) clarifying professional responsibilities of school counselors, (2) seeking professional supervisors'assistance or consulting senior colleagues, (3) applying for external resources to reduce the ethical dilemma, and (4) adjusting self-expectations to meet the needs of the situation. The influence stage refers to the impact of ethical dilemmas for high school counselors. According to the result of the study, this stage showed that (1) participants would rethink the professional role of high school counselors, (2) they would adjust inadaptation and accept role restrictions, and (3) they would reflect on the results of the conflict and reconstruct ethical attitudes. Based on the results of the current study, relevant recommendations were proposed: (1) encouraging high school counselors to examine their criteria for making ethical judgments, (2) enhancing the awareness of indigenous psychology in ethical education, and (3) establishing a system of professional supervisors for high school counselors.